As not to downplay the importance of the upcoming election, let me say that if you don't kmow who to vote for at this point, I will pray for you. Moving on.

Some time ago, I began writing a series of articles called America in Recovery. I did this because addiction is very easily identified – if you’re an addict. Let me be direct about what I see. I have been there.

We’ve all known family members who seem to be able to hold it together, to keep jobs, have relationships, to function in spite of something so destructive really going on.This is exactly what has been developing in our country for decades, and now accelerates in our financial system. Our financial infrastructure is crumbling, despite the frantic efforts being made to shore it up. America is fast approaching its bottom, (the addict bottom- not the market one) and our financial problems though seemingly insurmountable are not our biggest problem - but more on that later.

Now, I have never made the short list of those considered for the Nobel Prize for Economics. In the past I’ve needed an interpreter to understand the comments of then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. My financial credentials and background do not include MIT, Princeton or any of the many impressive think tanks that have produced so many of the “smartest guys in the room”. It’s not investing acumen that caused me to begin to reallocate client money to CD’s 2 years ago. I just know an addict when I see one. Most of the finance world trusted, blinded by our “apparent” success, but forgot that good ideas are nothing without good intentions.

I won’t reiterate what we all know about how this happened; the irresponsibility of government, regulators, investment bankers, securities firms, mortgage companies, insurers. It is clear to me that there was not only unethical but criminal activity involved in what I consider the greatest grift in our history. That we stand by as hundreds of billions of dollars are committed to bailing out the same institutions that created our nightmare is proof of our insanity. Our decision, having burned our hand on that stove, is to use the other hand.

Television pundits over and over call this “ the greatest financial crisis since the great depression” without knowing in their hearts what that means. It means banks and businesses continue to fail. Real estate values plummet. Value is subjective, and without buyers, there is nothing of value. Millions lose their jobs. Pain, pain, and more pain. There’s a movie you can watch to see it.

I get messages in movies - I’ve talked a lot about this on the radio show. I watched a movie the other day, that I have seen many, many times, so many times that my wife wonders what my obsession with this story is. Now I can tell her - there was the scene that I had never noticed.

The movie is Cinderella Man, the remarkable comeback story of James Braddock, played by Russell Crowe. This is the story of our rise from the ashes of the Great Depression, and what Braddock meant to so many, the hope he gave them, the courage he gave them.
It would be instructive to watch this movie now.

There was one line in the movie where the pompous, cigar chomping boxing promoter, disrespectful of Braddock and all else, is asked to “have a heart”. He says angrily, “my heart is for my family- my balls and my brains are for business”. Bingo. There it is.
The disconnect that allows businesses to do anything that contributes to the bottom line. Anything. It is what allows some government leaders to do anything they can to further their own personal agenda - even create wars. Its tragic.

Unbelievably, the financial collapse is not our biggest problem. As we rise from the ashes again, we will meet our real challenge.

I have just returned from three days of training with The Climate Project, Al Gore’s legion of presenters that has grown out of the landmark movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. It is simply the video version of the powerpoint presentation he’s shown for over 30 years. To say the updated news is not good, would be the ultimate in understatement. It is the reason I have committed to TCP to spread this word for the rest of my life.

The environmental news? Without too much detail let me say this. We are in a climate endgame. I have video of lakes in Canada that you can now light on fire, as the methane from the lakebeds which have been frozen for millions of years is now released. Methane is a global warming agent many times more damaging than Co2. In a very few years, polar ice will be gone entirely in the warmer seasons, along with them the animals that live there. By the end of this century, an expected rise in global temperature of between 8 and 11 degrees will cause the oceans to rise not 10- 20 feet, but 100 to 140 feet. What that means, is simple. If you’re in your fifties, your grandchildren would see the end of civilization on Earth.

So, now what? What do we do? Why bother shaving? Well, attention spans being what they are, I’m sure you’ll want to see tomorrow’s post called:

America in Recovery: Our Rise from the Ashes.