There’s numerous bank collapses. A massive spending frenzy over war, and promises of war. There’s a massive slide in the over all quality of life for American, and debt levels are unsustainable.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world sees this and wants no part of it. They have divorced the Untied States.
But the United States people have been living a fantasy for decades now. they are mostly unaware of how bad things are. Though there are those of us who are outside and watching this shit show in real time.
The people of the United States are on the threshold…
…a threshold from being the wealthiest and “best” nation in the world, to being a seventh rate banana republic in everything except ritual and projection.
And it too, it too..
Yes, it too… will contribute to the new Geo-political realities that the rest of the world will enjoy, but what will be denied to Americans.
Read on…
10 companies Sell 100 lithography machines to China！
Biden and neocon’s are fuming!
https://youtu.be/H4zxNFos1Jc
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
“Mom, there’s roaches in the chicken.”
My sister and I were staring at the roaches in our dinner. We always had a roach problem, but that summer when I was nine, the intense heat had brought on an unusual bloom of roaches. Mom had braised chicken wings in soy sauce for dinner Shanghai style. When she brought out dinner, my sister and I discovered a number of baby roaches in the bowl of wings.
Mom looked at the wings for a few seconds and said quietly, “pick them out,” before she turned and went back to the kitchen.
The cork on our bottle of cheap soy sauce had cracked the way it usually did halfway through the bottle and Mom had rolled a piece of paper and fashioned it into a paper cork. The tiny gaps in the makeshift cork were just big enough for baby roaches to get through.
My sister and I stared at the bowl of wings. The bodies of the baby roaches glistened as they floated in the soy sauce broth and clung to the wings. I was the first to break, taking a wing and picking off the tiny carcasses before eating it. It was delicious. Hunger won out, and we got over the gross factor pretty quickly.
……………..
“You’re going to move far away when you grow up,” Mom declared after reading my earlobes.
I was eight, and the apartment was very cold. We were in the middle of an unusually cold winter, and the radiators in the old building couldn’t keep up. My sister, who didn’t get cold as easily, was watching TV in the other room. Even though it was only late afternoon, Mom and I had crawled under her covers to huddle for warmth.
I looked over at Mom and felt sad at the idea of being far away from her. I cuddled up to her affectionately and said, “No Mom, I’ll always stay by your side.”
……………..
“I’ll give you $75.” The lady handed my mom the gold bracelet back after carefully inspecting it.
It was one of the few pieces Mom had left of the gifts she got on her wedding day.
“It’s worth at least $150,” Mom said.
The lady frowned and shook her head. “It’s not that heavy. I can only offer you $75.” she said.
Mom glanced at the six-year-old me. I looked back at her glassy-eyed, my face flushed with fever.
“I need to take her to the doctor,” Mom said.
The lady sighed. “$100. That’s the most I can give you.”
It wasn’t the first or the last item Mom would pawn.
……………..
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“Have an apple,” Mom said cheerfully.
I’d already had five apples that day and the thought of eating another made me nauseous.
We had taken a bus day tour and gone apple picking. For the past few years, Mom had looked wistfully at the apple picking flyers every time we passed by the travel agency a few blocks from our apartment. We’d finally saved enough to go. We had only brought containers of tap water with us for our day trip. Mom had reasoned there’d be plenty of apples to eat.
I looked at my sister and dad standing guard at the base of the apple tree, ready to catch the apples. I looked up at my mom perched high up in the apple tree, beaming down at us. I hadn’t seen Mom that happy in a long time, and her happiness was infectious.
My stomach growled. I picked up another apple and bit into it.
To this day, although I can’t stand the taste of them, apples still remind me fondly of my mother.
The Financial Times occasionally publishes something that isn’t hot garbage.
Unfortunately, neither the FT nor any other Western news outlet has managed to zero in on the most salient point of Xi’s statements last week regarding American containment.
We Chinese are notorious circumspect in our official rhetoric. We rarely name countries when we criticize them, even when it is painfully obvious which country we’re referring to. Xi broke with this convention when he accused the US by name of containment (among other offenses) against China.
Qin Gang, the new Foreign Minister and former Ambassador to the US, also broke the same convention and named the US in his inaugural address to the international press.
Subscribe to read | Financial Times
Qin also made an allusion that no Western reporter picked up on. He used the phrase “if the wolf comes 若是豺狼来了” when referring to the US. This is not a random Chinese idiom. It is a specific reference to the theme song of the quintessential Korean War movie, 上甘岭 (Battle of Triangle Hill), My Motherland 我的祖国. The famous lyric goes: 【若是那豺狼来了，迎接它的有猎枪】”If the wolf comes, we will meet him with our guns.” That is as explicit of a threat to arms as any Chinese official is ever going to make. I don’t know if Qin Gang meant for it to be picked up by foreign media or if he meant it purely for domestic consumption, but the subtext here is loud and clear: that the new administration in Beijing has come to a consensus that the use of military force is necessary, if not unavoidable.
—
It’s difficult to overstate how momentous this turn of events is.
Any scholar of modern Chinese history will know that China (unlike Japan) telegraphs its military actions months, if not years in advance.
It hopes that the threat of military action will cause the opposing side to back off and avoid war.
This is what Mao did before the Korean War when it warned the American repeatedly that China will intervene if the Americans don’t halt their advance towards the Chinese-Korean border.
The same happened in 1962 with India, and again in 1979 with Vietnam.
No one can say that China doesn’t warn people.
These parallel addresses from Xi and Qin are obvious telegraphed threats to deter the Americans from further intervention in Taiwan.
Needless to say they, will fall on deaf ears in Washington as both American parties try to one-up each other on how much they can piss off the Chinese. For example, Kevin McCarthy, the new Republican Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi’s successor, has already stated that he will visit Taiwan, just like Pelosi did.
The age of great power conflict is truly upon us once again, and as horrific as the Ukrainian War has been, it is but an appetizer to the mass devastation yet to come.
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
I did everything right… and I lost it all.
I never spent everything I made, invested early, figured out the ways “advisers” were making money off their advice and not giving me their best (hell, most of them didn’t even know they were giving bad advice), took calculated risks that paid off, and accumulated a fluid portfolio. I timed the markets accurately, getting out before the crash in 2000, 08, and the real estate crash in 2005. I reinvested with no loss in a downmarket and made more money.
But there was a hole in my boat. A leak I never would have believed.
I was involved in a new business that required large amounts of money on occasion, so needed some fluidity. I had the money, and was prepared. Everything was smooth sailing.
And then I opened an envelope.
The envelope contained a bill for a maxed out credit card. A card I had cancelled after making sure it was paid off. I called and found out that my wife had reopened the account. I asked my wife about it and she got this deer in the headlights look. She made excuses that sounded, if not reasonable at least legitimate from her point of view, and swore that it was the only debt she had.
And then I opened a second envelope.
To make a long story short I found out that cars paid for in cash now had loans on them. Credit cards I’d cancelled or never knew about were maxed out. A line of credit established with a bank, for emergency purposes, was completely drained. Accounts full of cash were empty.
And each step of the way my wife claimed it was the last one.
I had some pretty dark thoughts.
The financial ruin spread. We had enough cash to cover the debts, but that sunk the business. We had to sell our newly acquired real estate in the still down market, and on some we broke even and on others we only got a fraction of profit on what should have been good investments.
What was the worst part, was that there was no way for us to make up the losses. Which meant that my ego wasn’t just bruised… it was shattered. My life goal was to leave my children a financial legacy, a safety net, a family trust they could tap as they matured into retirement, something that they could use to send their children to college. And to provide for my wife and I in imminent retirement.
The well was deep and black and the sides were too slippery to climb.
I decided to ruin my wife by dragging her down with me. Divorce was not good enough. Murder was too kind.
You must understand that I’ve always loved my wife. Always supported her in her decisions, encouraged her, and always treated her as I would want to be treated.
And she had betrayed me.
I wished she had cheated on me. There would have been less dire repercussions.
I started to plan our future, a way to place her in dire straits before I took the long walk.
But something happened. Perhaps the one thing my ego needed was an incontrovertible and completely honest compliment. Something no person could give me, because I no longer trusted human beings. Something that restored my faith in myself.
After dropping my wife off at work (thank God she was working) I decided to walk the small gambling town we were living in. One of the bars had poker tables. I’d played maybe twenty games of draw poker in my life, never for any real money, and that was before I got married 30 years ago. The table I sat down at was dealing Texas Hold’um. Ten players per table, and several tables in a tournament. “Nickle roll” poker that only cost ten bucks to buy a seat. It was something to do, to take my mind off… everything.
I won the third tournament I played.
In the next three months I played 120 tournaments. Half the time I was at the final table. Half of those I was in the money. I won four in a row, and one week I won six of eleven I played.
There is nothing like self-affirmation not dependent on other human beings. It literally saved my life. And it gave me something else. A new perspective.
I forgave my wife.
The worst part now is that I will never be able to trust her again, completely.
We live on social security now. A simple and surprisingly easy life so far. We can’t travel anywhere that requires the expense of a hotel bill. But we’ve saved a little money. As long as there are no surprises we may make it. And that’s okay.
Check your mail…
Beef and Spinach Enchiladas
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
- 1 pound lean beef or turkey
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 1/2 cups frozen cut leaf spinach
- 4 ounces cream cheese
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin
- 1 can chopped green chiles
- 2 cups shredded Monterey jack cheese, divided
- 8 (8 inch) flour tortillas
- 1 can tomato sauce
- 1 cup chunky salsa
- 2 tablespoons cilantro or chopped green onion
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 13 x 9-inch glass baking dish.
- In 12-inch skillet cook beef and garlic. Drain if necessary.
- Add spinach to skillet, and cook 3-5 minutes. Reduce heat and add cream cheese, cumin, chiles and 1 1/2 cups of cheese. Spoon 1/3 cup mixture down center of each tortilla. Roll up; place seam side down in baking dish.
- In medium bowl mix tomato sauce and salsa. Spoon over tortillas; sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup cheese.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until thoroughly heated.
- Sprinkle with cilantro or green onion.
The Hustle / VAN McCOY / Dance / Perfume
Nicely done. Crisp.
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
It’s… quite humbling, to say the least. Which in my opinion is a good thing, and I’m very happy it happened.
I didn’t grow up wealthy: I was born in a small town in Southern Indiana, to a pair of poor Kentucky hillbillies, and I spent the first six years of my life not realizing that people lived in things besides house trailers! My mother may have been poor, but she had a great deal of ambition: she moved to Texas, looking to make a fresh start, and a couple years after she left my sister and I were sent down to her.
I had two or three other relatives who had left Indiana, and had happened to get into the real estate business. My mother joined them, and quickly became incredibly, incredibly successful. Six months after she moved to Texas, she was married, driving a Porsche and was an executive at the firm she’d started with.
A couple marriages and 10 years later saw us doing very, very well indeed: my mother and stepfather were firmly in the 1%. We took limos to school, and lived in a big house on an acre of land (and in the middle of the city, where land is very expensive, this was an extravagance indeed!). We expected things to get even better because, well, they always had for us. But the funny thing about life is that it doesn’t really care about your plans, or where you expect your life to go: no, life goes where it chooses, and a single event can turn everything upside down. In our case, that event was Tropical Storm Allison.
Allison completely and utterly devastated my mother and stepfather. All of their wealth was in property, and in their haste to expand their little empire they had forgotten to buy the one thing that every responsible person on the Gulf Coast has, which is flood insurance. Every single one of their properties flooded during the storm, and my life immediately changed. I was on my own at the time, 20 years old and supporting myself… but it was always assumed that my parents would pay for college for me, and it was something they had promised us since we were children. Well, that was long gone: they couldn’t support themselves, so how could we ask them to support us?
College wasn’t the only thing out the window: a year-and-a-half after the flood, my step-father committed suicide, and my mother’s drug and drinking habit got progressively worse. Formerly a functioning addict, within three years she had moved in with my sister and I, and she died in 2008 due to complications from alcoholism. My sister gave in to depression and anxiety, and lost her husband and children.
Me, I ran away from home. I went to trade school, learned a trade and left home for three years. I did a lot of thinking and writing then, and tried to figure out what sort of life I wanted for myself. I had lost everything that I had known… but, being a perpetual optimist, I realized that having a clean slate perhaps wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me. I had the opportunity, now, to figure out what kind of person I wanted to be, and I took advantage of it. After my mother died, I came back home, went back to school and graduated in 2013. I met the woman who became my wife, and we’ve been together nearly 7 years now… and everyday our relationship seems to get better and better. After I got out of school, with my teaching degree, I realized I really didn’t want to teach… and so I went back to the blue collar trade I used to pay my way through school. It certainly isn’t prestigious, but the pay is reasonable and, most importantly, I have peace. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, money comes and goes, but peace is everlasting.
What is your opinion on Chinese communism? Do you think it is more efficient and stable than western democracy or capitalism?
Chinese socialism is more stable and efficient in many ways and for people not just within China. When looking at the success of a system, we need to look at how it affects the entire world.
Western democracy and capitalism has given us:
- Wars of extermination of enemies across the world with no repercussions to the invading Western countries
- Corporatocracies that run the government and army.
- An over reliance on oil energy that has no end in sight.
- Manipulating governments and populations around the world to create markets for capitalists.
- Aging infrastructure.
- Ethno-nationalism and ethnically partisan politics.
- A growing population of people with no hope of home-ownership and heathcare.
- A growing percentage of homes monopolized by landlords.
- Institutionalized disunity.
“Black Mamba” The Bride vs Gogo Yubari
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
It’s absolutely horrible. I was 50, had recently sold my very successful car washes, had a $1MM in my checking account, the big house, kids in private school and life was grand.
I was focused on growing my other business (car wash equipment sales) when the manufacturer we represented lost a client that accounted 1/3 of our business, Hurricane Katrina hit (followed by several other hurricanes), and then the great recession.
I had stopped taking a salary and started loaning the company money. I was determined to work through this.
I even spent my retirement in a last attempt to turn things around.
Fast forward, the company was broke, I was broke, and I couldn’t pay the house mortgage.
I had to give up the house and shut down the business.
A personal bankruptcy soon followed, and then a separation from my wife of 30 years. The stress was unbearable, and I contemplated suicide.
The only thing that stopped me was that my dad had taken his life when I was 26, and I knew first hand the pain that my loved ones would bear for my actions.
The worst part is the loss of self confidence and depression, followed by the loss of “friends”. It’s amazing how quickly they disappear!
I will say that two friends stuck by me. One in particular would check on me and take me out to ride his motorcycles to help take my mind off of things.
I moved into a friend’s rental property and I started looking for work.
I had owned my own companies since college, was a past Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, and had never really worked for anyone. At the worst, I was working at a construction company repairing equipment in their yard, collecting food stamps and living alone.
Fast forward a couple of years.
My wife and I got back together, we moved to Texas, and I took a job back in my industry (building car washes). We now rent a nice home, and were recently able to buy a nice used car. It gets better every day. I love my job, and I hope to get back into car wash ownership (with investors), while continuing to do what I do.
In summary, there are a couple of important lessons to take from this:
- Good times don’t last; bad times don’t last.
- Most of the people who claim to be your friend are only there for the good times.
- Business associates that you’ve spent millions of dollars with over decades will instantly turn their back on you when the money stops.
- Don’t ever stop taking care of yourself. Exercise is great for relieving the stress.
- Face facts. Recognize when you have a losing hand and walk away. And if bankruptcy is inevitable, just do it. Don’t procrastinate and stick your head in the sand.
- Do not EVER use your retirement money. I used mine to try and save the company, and I am now 60 years old and starting over.
- Never stop believing in yourself.
The utter stupidity of Australia…
Not from MM. -MM
As Chinese, we have many things to be thankful for. But perhaps prime among them is the utter stupidity of our enemies:
To sum it up: the Australian plan to “counter” China is to field 8 nuclear-power submarines… against the PLAN, the navy with the greatest number of anti-submarine frigates on Earth… and to fight a war in the Taiwan Strait (max depth: 50 meters, shallow enough to spot a sub with the naked eye).
And that’s not even considering the absurdity of Australia, basically a coal mine with a flag, going to war against the country that buys most of its coal.
It’s one layer of stupidity on top of another, like a stupidity wedding cake.
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
I learned how to re-define poor, when I realized that money is not how to measure wealth.
I went from a $165,000 year job to a $50,000 a year job, managing an a charitable organization. After auditing the books I realized the organization could not afford to pay my salary. I cut it down to $40,000. The job was one of the best I ever worked.
After one year, I was asked to stay on for 5 years, but could not make that long of a commitment. I hired a replacement and the replacement has far exceeded anything I could have accomplished to increase the effectiveness of the organization. wonderful person. Meanwhile, I became unemployed and lived in my car in the parking lot of the local train station. Being a Christian, I had my Bible with me. Every time I sat in my car and read the Bible, I felt Jesus was in the car with me. I was at home.
Over the next year I applied for over 60 jobs, literally across the globe, both civilian and military. The final touch was when I applied for a job as a janitor to clean bathrooms. I had such a job as a college student, so I knew how to do it. However, I was not hired, as being unqualified to clean toilets. At that point I laughed to myself and said, “Jesus, you must have something important to tell me, because it is statistically impossible for me not to get hired.” I made it my job to walk in whole-hearted faith and obedience to Him. That lasted a year.
I did whatever I sensed I was being told to do. I learned that Jesus would and could take care of my need for housing, food, transportation. Not my wants, but my needs. It was a great time. Enjoyed it a lot. I had one microwave plastic tray for a plate, a taco bell plastic cup, one spoon, one knife and one fork. No kitchen goods. No furniture but an inflatable air mattress and folding chair (tiny desk lamp sat on the chair). I lived in a rental property I owned that was in foreclosure. I worked on the property to clean it up for sale. I sat on the stairway to eat my meals, one stair for a chair and another for a table. But I was happy. There was a joy in sensing I was right where I was supposed to be, in the will of God. Prayer was fun, worship was rich, met many interesting people. Money would show up when I needed it, but most of the time I had maybe $40 or less.
So, looking back at it, I would say that as a white-collar professional earning 6 figures, I was kind of poor in the things that mattered, but when unemployed, but close to Jesus and with Godly friends, I became rich. Losing money changes your sense of values.
It is quite liberating to own nothing. I have yet to see a Brink’s armored truck at a graveyard. So, laboring for decades to have stuff and money, only to die at the end without having experienced the love and grace of God is the ultimate poverty.
The Chase: Twins vs Morpheus | The Matrix Reloaded [Open Matte]
The Cult Of The Elite
Every society has a moral code, a collection of unwritten rules that govern the behavior the members toward one another and with the outside world. A moral code, of course, is a collection of rules reflecting the moral preferences of society. These things and activities are good, while these things and activities are bad. The authority for these preferences can be the gods, tradition or what the rulers prefer. Fashion, after all, is just the sartorial preferences of the people in charge.
Despite what conservatives insist, the moral code of a society is a top down affair, imposed by the people in charge. Their preferences start at their primary preference, which is to remain in charge. That means the preferences the rulers impose on their subjects reflects their interests, at least how they see their interests. It is not a perfect link as elite society is as subject to evolutionary pressure as the rest of society, but it is a good place to start in understanding the elite.
Since a moral code regulates behavior, we can look at behavior and do a bit of reverse engineering to get a peak at the code. What are the things the elites do that point to what they prefer and not prefer? It is not what they say, as people say what they think they are supposed to say. This is especially true of elites. What matters is what they do as this indicates what they value. One thing libertarians got right is the concept of revealed preferences. Actions are what matter.
For example, we have the constant lying from official Washington. They lie about everything to the point where it is the norm. No one is bothered to be outraged as it is just how the things are now. It is the line incorrectly attributed to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but written by Elena Gorokhova. “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
Obviously, truth in the empirical sense is not important. Dig deeper and you see that the lying is mostly in service to narratives that define the world of Washington. In other words, they are not lying to deceive so much as lying to support a version of reality that is preferred at the moment. They see the truth and the lie as means to an end, judged only on the ends. What counts is the narrative, while facts are just props in the narrative structure, used only when needed.
What this tells us is the people inside the political system are not hostile to the people, but indifferent to them. The lying is not an effort to trick the people into supporting one thing or another, but mostly about internal considerations. Even the lies over Covid, which were an effort to shape behavior, were actually in service to the narrative they created around the virus. Immiserating millions of people was a happy accident, but never the point of their lying about Covid.
We have a couple of recent examples that are useful in understanding what truly matters to the elites. First is this case involving a couple of fringe goofballs using robocalls to mock black people. Americans receive billions of bogus calls, despite it being illegal, but these two warranted special attention. The judge makes clear that if they had mocked Irish people, for example, it would have been fine. They targeted black people and no one is allowed to mock the gods.
We have this case of four black people who drove to Mexico so one of them could get cosmetic surgery, but they got carjacked instead. Sadly, thousands of Americans are attacked by Mexicans around the border ever year. Of course, tens of millions of people from around the world stream over the border. This not only damages the lives Americans near the border, but it has ruined life around the country. This is cheered by the political class as the browning of America.
This case is different. You see, the four people involved are black and no one is allowed to lay a hand on our sacred black people. Lady Bugs Graham is now demanding we go on jihad against Mexico as retribution. Official Washington is suddenly ablaze with angry rhetoric about what is happening south of the border. Mexicans kill white people every day in America, but when they killed a couple of black people, they crossed a line in elite moral code that must be addressed.
Of course, anyone paying the least bit of attention could come up with a dozen such cases where elites are moved to action because an issue involves black people, but they are indifferent when it involves white people. Candace Owens is a millionaire because she tells white people they are good boys, very good boys. Even so, this Mexican case is threatening to change policy regarding Mexico. It is not just a show to signal their virtue to one another.
A century ago, Paris was gripped by something called negrophilia which is derived from the French négrophilie that means love of the negro. The beautiful people would collect African art and hang out at Jazz clubs. Much of it was driven by exposure to black troops from America and Africa during the war. The controlling factor was the desire of the avant-garde to feel trendy and separate from the bourgeoise. It was all superficial and eventually was replaced by new fads.
Today’s version is something more than a fad. It is not just a weapon to be used against the remaining white people. What we are seeing is antiwhite, but it is not necessarily hatred of whites that is the source of this new moral code. Instead, it seems to be a genuine worship of black people, as if they are magical beings. Our elites now think they will be judged by how well they take care of black people. Who will do the judging is never spoken, but that just adds to the mystery.
That last bit is important. Much of what we see from our elites fits the pattern of religiosity, but it lacks the explicit supernatural authority. They never say why they worship black people. They never point to an authority for this behavior. It is just assumed to be there at the center of things. Perhaps that is what gives it power in the minds of these people. Their moral code is now a mystery cult in which it is essential to not know why you embrace the moral code.
A million years ago in another context, John Derbyshire made the following observations about cults. “To those inside [a cult], it appears to be a structure of perfect logical integrity, founded on unassailable philosophical principles, while to those outside it seems to some degree nutty; to some other degree hysterical; and to some yet other degree a threat to liberty.” This sounds eerily accurate with regards to the worship of nonwhites by our ruling classes.
What we are seeing is the evolution of a cult of the elite, in which salvation is sought through the worship of that which symbolizes the antithesis of the West. This explains the extremism of these people. How can you be satisfactorily anti-Western? How can one be satisfactorily worshipful of black people? What is the outer limit of the rejection of biological reality? There is no answer to these things, so cult members keep looking for an even more extreme expression of these values.
Returning to where we have started, an objective examination of elite behavior reveals a bizarre moral code that is out of sync with reality. That gap between what they believe, their moral preferences, and reality, is the measure of their virtue. In other words, the way to understand elite behavior is to imagine a cult founded on the rejection of human reality and then that cult gains control of society. That is the condition of the West and it is probably not going to cure itself.
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
$350 Million to Zero in less than a year.
Over the course of a decade, I built an international business with 3.5K employees.
My partner was jailed in Europe for defrauding one of the countries out of $14 Million in tax-grants.
Many of our largest customers, concerned that we would have delivery problems, took production of the designs we completed for them, to other mfgs, and instead of receiving the full design fee and $ per part in mfg, we received only the design fee and a royalty based on the production volume that would now be accomplished elsewhere.
Our cost structure was based upon having the production volume, when that was reduced drastically, the company could no longer afford the employees and facilities throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.
It all started to collapse inward. Impossible to stop the run from our production facilties as more customers became concerned.
My company dropped $350 Million in sales, to Zero in less than a year.
I had been flying over 200K miles per year on business, and working 80 hour weeks. Tremendous stress.
When it was over, fewer friends, crazy debt, a lot of stress, but that subsided over time, and came to know who my true friends were.
Like I’ve always said, money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy the best form of misery. When you don’t have the money, life is much more difficult.
But I gained a lot of time to spend with my family. That was the true benefit of losing the company and $$$.
These China “Experts” need to be stopped
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
ĺIn 2006 I was married with two boys in private schools. I lived in a three-story house in one of the best suburbs in the city. I had a corporate yacht, drove a porsche 911, had been offered $20 million for my business two years earlier which I had declined. I owned around $4 million in real estate, flew first class on family holidays every year and took my eighty-odd staff on four-day conferences to five-star resorts every year. At thirty-nine, I was featured as sixty-fifth in our country’s richest under forty. I was the only child of a single parent migrant mum so I had experienced poverty and felt I had accomplished plenty—a classic, rags to riches story, life was good, but as they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
2009 following the GFC I had three staff left and had moved to a much smaller office. We were just keeping our heads above water trying to wait out the fallout when we became embroiled in a legal battle with a large multi-national who we funded our mortgages through, GE Money was itself experiencing problems due to the GFC and decided it would no longer pay us the monthly fees due.
We had to wait for the outcome of the court proceedings to start getting paid again and the company dragged it out for four years which saw the yacht, the car, the three remaining staff, and eventually the business go before we could get our day in court. Soon after, my marriage broke down and I relinquished the house to my wife without a fight, hoping she would be a good caretaker for the kids’ inheritance and keep it safe from creditors. The kids took the separation badly and my eldest son, who was in his mid teens, spiraled out of control with alcohol and drugs.
Thinking creditors would soon take whatever money was left, I rented a luxury apartment overlooking the harbour and locked myself away until the money ran out, waiting to hit rock bottom. I know now what I didn’t know then, that I was suffering from extreme depression. I stopped contacting people and would leave phone calls, mail, and emails unanswered. I hit the booze hard, as I sold off the remaining business assets to pay for rent and food. I kept thinking of ideas to start a new business but would keep putting it off, until four years later I had only $60,000 left.
While times were good I had given my mum a mobile phone and a cab charge card, as by that stage she was a pensioner and did not drive. They were the last things I reined in and it was hard to do, as mum would constantly tell me how proud she was of me and bragged to anyone who would listen about my success. Finally I plucked up enough courage to tell her I had to stop paying for both and in a series of unfortunate incidents mum started to show the first signs of dementia. Her decline was rather quick and it became obvious to me that she could no longer look after herself as the cleanliness of the house of my usually compulsively clean mother deteriorated rapidly.
Seeing my mum in such a state must have snapped me out of my depression because I moved in with her and began upgrading and cleaning the house. Within two years her conditioned had declined so much that I had become her full-time caretaker: cooking, cleaning, taking her to medical appointments and outings, but as her health further declined I could not keep up the level of care her condition now required, so I eventually found a good nursing home for her. I was again without a purpose but I was over the depression (mum’s final unintended—but most valuable—gift to me before entering the nursing home).
The solicitor helping me with mum’s paper work offered me a partnership to help him grow his business. My son had regained control over his life and both were now in universities. I had not spoken to my wife since the breakup. I was happy with the level of care mum was receiving and I was back on track working on growing a new business again, but I was soon to learn that falls from grace like that are not so easily forgiven.
The first sign that this was not a fresh start came ten months into the partnership when we tried to get an overdraft and it was declined due to the fact that I now had a bad credit rating. This put a strain on the partnership even though we had managed substantial growth. Then my partner received a call from child services: apparently they had assessed my income at $400,000 a year and I was suppose to be paying my wife child support for the last six odd years based on that level of income, even though my income was nil and I was living off of selling off assets. The debt was now over $90,000 and they wanted to garnishee my drawings from the business. In the same week the tax office called to say they wanted to garnishee my drawings for an outstanding tax debt of $50,000 from the sale of some of the real estate assets. A week after that phone call I received a message from my partner while at home:
“The locks on the premises at work have been changed, you can no longer operate the company bank accounts and I have removed you as a director and shareholder on the company register, don’t bother coming in. I would encourage you to fight me but I know you don’t have the money.”
I was devastated, but I was dertremined to get my life back on track. After applying for over a hundred jobs and getting knocked back, I was feeling like a failure and finding it hard not to fall back into the pit of depression. It was looming just on the horizon, beckoning for me to escape again into a drunken state of self pity. I felt like I was in a scene from the movie Trading Places.
One day one of my boys made the comment to me that I was the role model for him and his brother, implying they need to see how I handle situations so they can learn from it. While I didn’t answer them as I was acutely aware that I was at one of the lowest points of my life, it served to reminded me that wealth and health in this life come and go. When money is not an issue, honesty and integrity are easy to come by. How someone deals with adversity is the true indication of a person’s character. The legacy I want to leave them as a father has become the main motivation for me not to give up.
Discovering Quora and answering business questions was a Godsend as the reactions I was getting from answers kept reminding me that I still had a great deal of business acumen and skill.
I went into consulting and managed to pick up four regular clients and the odd, single session consulting job. While I loved the work, I was spending over 50% of my time chasing payments which I hated with a passion.
Around the same time I found myself dumping one evening on a good Russian friend. Her response resonated with me:
“There’s an old Russian saying that says ‘If you want to know which direction to head in, look at where you’ve been and where you are now—that should point you in the right direction.’”
That night I decided to get back into finance. Much had changed following the GFC and I now needed a credit licence to operate, and I needed an industry diploma to get the licence.
While I am not there yet, I have completed the diploma on line, have re-established old industry contacts, have sorted out the tax office debt. I have a solicitor working for me on the child support debt and I am trying to get the old company name back. I have to constantly fight to keep the depression from surfacing. Now in my 50s, this will be my final shot at rebuilding and I intend to make sure I don’t miss it. While I have relapsed for an evening on the odd occasion, every win is an inch forward and suppressing the feeling of failure and the resulting depression gets easier to manage with every step forward.
If all goes to plan, I should be able to open the doors of a new business with an old name in the next six weeks, but because things rarely ever go to plan so I’m giving myself until the end of this year.
When I look back, even as I write this, I find it easy to blame others, my circumstances, the economy anything but myself for my fall from grace. It takes years to face up to the fact that while many things may have contributed to my present situation but it was mainly my poor decisions that are to blame.
Hopefully when I am back there again, it will be as someone who is older, wiser, more experienced and certainly more humble than in the past.
Edit 14/9/19: I am overwhelmed by the support readers are showing. I never expected this answer to get so much attention and initially I was going through and acknowledging every comment and answering every question but this morning I woke up to over 1,000 notifications. Up-votes are near 5,000 and readership is approaching 90,000. It is both motivating and inspiring.
I want to thank everybody that has commented and up-voted this answer, and in particular those that have indicated a connection with my story by being in similar circumstances. To you I wish all the best for the future and say to you what I constantly say to myself, “though the mountain looks daunting, if you have climbed it before, there is no reason why you cant climb it again,” but let’s not focus on the climb, having fallen, been hurt and recovered, let’s instead remember the remarkable view from the top as we inch forward.
Edit 22/10 Over 14000 upvotes, hundreds of responses, 120 shares and approaching 250K views. I feel somewhat overwhelmed by the support of strangers and want to thank everyone that took the time to upvote and/or comment.
For those that have asked for an update here is where I am at;
I have been running around trying to reestablish old industry contacts and look for a mortgage funder. I have found 2 willing to support me.
Both I have done business with in the past and one has offered an office on the fringe of the city on a week to week basis and staff support costed out on an as needs basis. This is a huge help for a start up and I am grateful the relationship remained solid and for their faith in me.
The other has just been appointed as the CEO of a new funding company using block chain technology.
I have also been talking to two other people in the industry about a potential partnership. This has fallen through after weeks of discussions but fortunately I continued to progress as solo operator in case it fell through.
The tax office debt has been resolved and extinguished and I have caught up on 3 years tax returns.
I have found a government program that pays $1000 a month for a year to aid with a start up and provides a business coach for 3 months and I have enrolled into it. It’s not a lot but it’s going to be a huge help in those first 12 months.
Also this morning I received an offer for an interview for a senior role in a well-funded startup. It is just an interview which I will attend (like many before) but will continue to progress the business plan in the probable event I am not accepted for the role and will decide whether to take it if an offer is made. That decision will depend on how much more progress I have made toward my startup business, I have already invested a lot of time in progressing it forward.
I have researched trying to get the old name back, as there is some residual marketing value in the name (I used to spend $50K a month on advertising). My accountant is working on it. Unfortunately, although flattering, quite a few companies in finance decided to use the name the moment the trademark expired, but my accountant thinks it may be possible.
I negotiated a final settlement with the solicitor; it was nowhere near what it was worth, but I needed to close that chapter and move on.
Some obstacles still to overcome:
The child support case is ongoing. While the department acknowledges I was not earning $400,000 a year, they are relying on the fact that I am out of time to protest their decision. and I should have done it 5 years ago, so the debt stands. I explained that I was in a depression, but not having a doctor’s certificate to prove it according to them makes it just “hearsay”. I am appealing the decision.
I received a letter from the Department of Human services to say that since mum owns a house and she has now been in full-time care for over 12 months, under new laws that applied after 1/1/17 (she entered the nursing home on 1/9/17), anyone with a home in full-time care for over 12 months forgoes their pension. I have applied for a reverse mortgage against her home to help pay for her care, but it can only be a temporary solution, so I need to start earning enough money quickly to fund her care.
Thank you all again for your support. Whenever I feel I’m in over my head, I go back to this post and take the time to read all your uplifting comments, and 20 minutes of doing so recharges my resolve to see this through.
Hopefully the next edit will be the day I open the doors of the new business.
EDIT 17 December 2019
Well it’s nearly the end of the year. Reading all the comments on this thread has become my “go to” when I need a pick up; and again, thank you all for your kind words of support. This I hope will be my final update.
I mentioned in an earlier edit that I was going for a job interview. It turns out it was for a partnership role in a startup. I was offered the partnership and very excited mainly due to the caliber of the other 3 partners. As they say, the sum of the total skill and knowledge base in the partnership is more valuable than the sum of the individual parts. Exciting enough for me to walk away from my own startup as well as the government grant based on the strength and skillset of my potential partners .
The startup is what is know in the industry as a “Fintech”, a finance business that relies heavily on modern technology platforms. I am honored to be partnering with such high-caliber people and that they even see me as a colleague. To date, the company has been formed, a placeholder webpage has been developed, a pitch deck presentation is being worked on to take to venture capitalists, and an outline of the business model has been developed.
We start officially in February, and I am in the process of tying up loose ends.
To that extent the only two things left to clear up is mum’s pension to cover her care costs and the child support debt, which I continue to work on. There is also a Parliamentary inquiry into the child support system that I intend to make a submission to, while it won’t help me directly, I am sure it will help many who might end up in my situation in the future.
While this will be my last update on this thread. I continue to get wonderful comments from strangers all over the world who connect with my story, made more so by those of you who comment about being inspired by my plight. The fact is that every time I come back to this thread, it is your comments of support that have inspired me.
Why did the Australia. Government agree to the one sided AUKUS deal to buy American and British submarines?
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What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
I grew up in paradise, 12 (13? I feel like I’m forgetting one) cars in the driveway; muscle cars, sports cars, you name it, at one point or other – if it was a cool car – one of em probably sat on our driveway.
We lived in a sprawling villa, approx 700 sqm, with 360° views – the sea, and the mountains. Paradise.
My father captained Sweden’s largest sailing vessel, she didn’t stay Swedish for long as she was soon under Spanish flag.
My mother ran a hotel painted by a local artist with palm trees and beach scenes in the front.
I went to private school and brought home pretty much any animal imaginable; ferrets, rabbits, chickens, dogs, horses… it didn’t matter, we had a family living in the tower who waited on us hand and foot.
I was known as the “spoiled kid” throughout in not just my class – but all classes, literally everyone knew who we were. Dad would pick me up in a different car every day, depending on his mood it might have been the wine red Monte Carlo that could barely traverse half our mountain village – it was so wide, or it could be the V12 XJS Jaguar; the top down, the dogs chilling in the back. Mum picked me up on her race horse a couple of times, she was retired (the horse, not mum).
We were a batshit family – on the surface, and at home.
I was always told I’d be a millionaire as I turned 18. I didn’t quite grasp that we were “rich” until the divorce started…
The divorce. Damn.
We lost it all, because my parents were “unable” to speak to each other if not through lawyers. Expensive lawyers. 10 years they didn’t speak, until I disappeared in a war zone for 10 days (that’s a story for another time). The divorce was known on the coast as the “circus show” and was quite a spectacle everytime they appeared in court.
Anyway, the sheer stress and depression that the hate caused made both parts take awful monetary decisions.
At 16, I was shipped off from my horses and paradise villa to an island not far off Gothenburg in Sweden.
I’d never lived in an apartment, the other kids quite literally thought I was telling fibs when I disclosed anything about my family… so I shut up, and began isolating myself.
Anyway, sure, I’m depressed and I dream of that house and I cry for my home… but, it’s not the riches I miss, it’s the happy go lucky times. I desperately want those rag times to come back. I wish we all were as happy as when we were rich.
So, how does it feel? Pretty shit.
Drunken Master II Fight Scene – Market Fight – ORIGINAL HK Soundtrack
The Coming Crisis
Every war is a part of a larger story of relations between the nations that fought in the war and the war in Ukraine is not an exception. This war started a year ago, but it is part of the story that started in 2014. of course, that chapter was preceded by the aftermath of the Cold War. In the case of the neocons driving American policy, their portion of this story begins during the Trial of the 193. Like all stories, the war will end and what will follow are more chapters to close out this story arc.
Within the war itself there are chapters. In the case of Ukraine, the first chapters could be called the pre-awakening. Both the Russians and Ukrainians, assumed this would be a short affair ending in rounds of talks. The Europeans, in contrast, thought it would be a short affair as well, but instead ending in a Russian collapse. They had been assured by their American handlers that Russia was a hollow country. Once the sanctions hit them, the peasants would revolt.
Interestingly, all parties kept on believing their version of the plot even after it should have been clear they were wrong. The Russians kept pressing for negotiations, even after Ukraine told them Washington would not allow it. The Europeans kept pushing new sanctions packages, even after it was clear the Russian economy was not going to collapse and there would be no peasant revolt. For a few months last spring and summer, everyone stuck with the old script.
It appears that it was the Russians who were the first to realize that the script was wrong and that they needed to rethink things. The mobilization of reserves along with a reorganization of their military structure in Ukraine followed. The Russians figured out that this is a long war of attrition between Moscow and its allies versus the American Empire and its allies. What we have seen for the last six months is a slow, deliberate grind of the Ukrainians by the Russians.
We are about to see the final closing of one chapter of this war and the opening of a new chapter due to developments on the battlefield. The first and most important bit of news is the encirclement of a town called Bakhmut. If you look at this pro-Ukrainian deployment map, you see the line of contact in Ukraine. In this case, pro-Ukrainian does not mean pure propaganda. It simply relies primarily on Ukrainian sources to assemble the map and unit positions.
If you zoom into the area dead center of the line of contact, you will find the town called Bakhmut and see a large grouping of Ukrainian forces. They have been throwing everything they can into this town in order to hold it. The Russians now have the town surrounded, with tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops inside it. It appears that Zelensky has instructed the forces inside this cauldron to fight to the last man, much as he did last year with the Mariupol garrison.
There are two primary reason Zelensky and the general staff are sacrificing tens of thousands of men for this town. One reason is strategic. It is the keystone to this defense line in the Donbas. If it falls, the Ukrainians will have to fall back to their last line of defense east of the Dnieper River. That last defensive line is not as built up as the current defensive positions. The Ukrainians are buying as much time as they can in order to build up that new defense line.
The other reason for this massive sacrifice of men and machines is the general psychology of the war on the Ukrainian side. They have been told since the start that they just needed to hang on until the Russians crumbled. Then they were told to hang on until the West could provide wonder weapons. Now they are hanging on because they have no other option. For Zelensky, this war is about buying time while hoping for some change that will save him from his fate.
Another reason for the great turning of the page that is coming in this war relates to that waiting strategy of the Ukrainians. They are running out of supplies. Reports keep coming in from Ukrainian sources that they are out of ammunition. The reason they are out of ammunition is the West cannot get ammunition to them fast enough. The reason for that is the West is running out of ammunition as well. After a year of ground war, the Western warehouses are now empty.
The issue has become so critical that the people running foreign policy had Biden sign “a presidential waiver of some statutory requirements (Waiver) authorizing the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to allow the Department of Defense (DoD) to more aggressively build the resiliency of America’s defense industrial base and secure its supply chains.” This is the first step in transitioning the economy to wartime, which means prioritizing defense over civilian items.
Something similar is afoot in Europe. What the West has come to realize is they were all wrong about the Russian economy. It has performed better over the last year than the European economies. They were also wrong about Russia’s standing in the world, particularly with other major powers like China and India. They have not been willing to go along with Washington’s war on Moscow. Eighty percent of the world’s population now supports the Russian side in this conflict.
Another piece of this is a bit of reality Western leaders have ignored for so long they stopped thinking about it. That is, the industrial base of the West no longer exists as a practical matter. Generations of offshoring and global supply chain management have left Western countries with a tiny manufacturing base. China now has more manufacturing capacity than the U.S. and Europe combined. Throw in Russia, Brazil and India and you see the problem.
The shape of the next chapter in this new global war is still unclear, but one storyline will be the looming political crisis in the West. The sanctions regime is simply unsustainable for Europe so it must come to an end. It cannot come to end until the war in the Ukraine has come to an end. The trouble is European political leaders have ruled out any end other than Ukrainian tanks rolling through Moscow. Europe has created an unsolvable problem for itself.
Another part of the story could be a change in China. For a long time the Chinese have viewed their relationship with Washington as purely economic. If they did good business with Washington, everything else solved itself. Beijing now sees that things have changed and so they are changing. All of the war talk over Taiwan has finally convinced the Chinese to adjust their position. Sino-American relations will no longer be about business, but about great power conflict.
Of course, all of this will be happening against the backdrop of a political class in Washington that looks like the shuffleboard courts in Boca. Everyone who wants to be Pericles in this war is too old to say the name clearly. Of course, Washington is full of potential Cleons among the younger generations of politicians, but none of them are bright enough to understand it. As this war enters the crisis chapters, the West is desperately short of men who are good in a crisis.
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
I would consider myself financially well off before the crash in 2008. Although most of my work history was medical, I had become a mortgage broker in 2003. I had gone through burn out and needed to do something a little more conducive to uplifting outcomes for a while. I enjoyed helping people obtain their dream. I swore I’d be upfront about the pitfalls to my clients, I’d educate them on the process, and I’d be diligent in bringing it all together in a timely fashion. I was able to purchase any thing I desired, eat out all the time, and work in my pajamas at home if I desired. Life was good, and actually the best ever.
Months before the crash we saw the bursting bubble on the horizon. However, denial still flowed through my veins, and many like myself were unprepared for the abrupt onset of the inability to complete loans. I had spent the majority of my savings months before on back surgery because I didn’t bother purchasing insurance. I didn’t think I needed it because l took my health for granted.
My life went like this…..
severe debilitating back pain from 2 herniated disks followed by surgery and recovery. Midway through my recovery the mortgage business CRASHES and BURNS!! No savings, no incoming work, unable to get processed loans closed, no money coming in. My father dies unexpectedly and I’m consumed with sadness. I sell all my belongings to move out of my “pending foreclosure” home, and to have something to live on as no one is hiring at the time. My car was repossessed, my credit cards were maxed and unpaid. I had an emergency total hysterectomy, and had to spend my savings on the surgery. Now there’s no money for rent so I move in with my 23 year old son and his two roommates. This was the most humiliating low point for me. I total my car I traded a tv and computer for. Since I had no money to purchase it, I bartered. I had no insurance so it was a total loss. My mother passed away. Now the reality hits I have no parents. Sadness overwhelms me along with feelings of no hope. I suffer a bit of a meltdown.
I go back to school to update my medical skills and retain licensure again. I sprain my ankle twice in 3 months, and desperately try to keep up with school while recovering….twice.
I obtain work but it’s 100 miles away. I found out I was older and less resilient then I used to be. I wasn’t able to handle the physical requirements of the job, or the 12 hour night shifts. I had a debilitating iron deficiency I was unaware of at the time, but it wreaked havoc on my physical and emotional abilities. Now no job and no place to live, as my son and his girlfriend had moved in together in a smaller place anticipating my move closer to work. I bought a dilapidated mobile home for $500 (I had to pay in payments as I didn’t have $500) in an old Florida senior park. It wasn’t ghetto, it just wasn’t like other retirement parks in the area with paved roads, swimming pools, club houses, etc. I still did not know the origin of my overwhelming lethargy (iron deficiency) and literally had no energy to move or rehab this home. My son and his friends gutted it for me and got my electric and water in place. However, no one had time to renovate it completely, and I had no money to do it. So I moved the few things I had left into this barren old place.
Seven years later I’m still tweaking things in my home, and decorating to my taste. My bills are minimal and I live within a budget. I pay cash for everything, including my car and furnishings. I’ve gone on to get my Bachelors and Masters degrees in my lifelong interest of Psychology. I do preventative healthcare, and have coverage for any medical expenses. I don’t buy new, always second hand. I buy disaster furnishings and make them into something I adore, far more than anything that’s new. I live simply and without stress of finances. I love where I live and my little home. I’ve learned more about life and myself since losing everything, than I did the 25 years before that. I feel grateful that the circumstances occurred the way they did for me to get to this place in time. I feel consistently happy about life. As hard as it was going through all the loss and changes it was for the best, definitely!!
The Ten Commandments – Moses’ Focus and Dedication
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
To put it in short, it feels like shit.
I’m writing this as a 14 year old, living in a pile of garbage compared to my life 2 years ago. Although I hate my life now, I’m not stupid. I’ve learned to appreciate every little small thing in life and I know that it could be a lot worse.
If we rewind back to 2011, my family was just getting back to our wealthy status after the financial crisis in 2008. Our net worth in 2011, was maybe $3 Million which doesn’t seem like a lot but it makes an incredible difference when you don’t have 100k. We were living in Dubai at the time and living a very good life. Good private schools for me and my little sister, fancy cars for my dad, expensive purses and clothing for my mom. And of course an amazing villa close to the beach.
In the summer of 2011 my family relocated to Canada, Toronto more specifically. This was due to my dad getting a very high paying job in Iraq(he is a banker). I wasn’t told about him moving to Iraq so I wouldn’t worry about him as a kid, but between mid 2011 and 2016 I saw my dad for maybe two months in total. I didn’t like the circumstance but my dad was pulling in close to $800k plus a $400k bonus every year so we would never had to struggle financially again. After I was told about the situation, stories of the 17 bodyguards my dad had with him came out, and it got me to thinking about how much my dad sacrificed for me, my mom and my sister. He was my hero. Every time he visited us he would play sports and video games with me all day, literally the best dad ever.
In late 2015 terrorism was getting to be a bigger problem in Iraq and my dad resigned from his job due to increased danger conditions. I was excited as this meant I would see him a lot now. After about three weeks of him being “retired” he got a job offer in London, England. A very good job, but not as well paying as the one in Iraq.
My family relocated to the UK at the end of December in 2015. Now my dad lived with us, and life was very good. He had a signing bonus that was very high, and we had a large amount of savings. A house of 5 Million British Pounds, a highly spec Range Rover with swaravski crystal detailing, elite private schools. We had money at the time, but couldn’t afford most of the things we had. My dad was overjoyed to finally be with us everyday and wanted to make sure we were relaxed and enjoyed life. So he spent crazy amounts of money on us, putting me and my sister in a school that costs nearly as much as Harvard. Buying a house we couldn’t afford, and cars(because me and him shared the love of cars) that cost as much as the house we live in today.
In mid 2016 my dad was sued for something he didn’t do, and it pretty much ruined his reputation. At that point he was different, always angry. Our savings were close to gone and the lawsuit caused my dad to give up his paycheck for the next 8 months in order to settle. He worked from 6am all the way until midnight at an attempt to get a raise in order to keep us safe financially. The raise didn’t come. He struggled to keep my sister and I in the same school which ate a lot of our savings. We moved to a smaller home, and he sold the cars except for one. A bmw x1 which was the first car he bought for my mom to learn how to drive on the tiny roads in the UK. By the end of 2016 my mom went to the train station to pick up my dad because he was coming home early from work. When the front door to the house opened all I could see was my mom in tears. My dad told us we need to have a family meeting.
He told us that we have to move. First my sister started to cry because she is young and didn’t understand our situation, she said she would miss her friends. My dad said that if we try to live another year here we would end up bankrupt. Then I started to cry because at the time I made some of the best friends I could ever ask for that I still keep in contact with on a daily basis to this day. My dad’s reputation was fucked, excuse my language. And work for him was becoming very difficult because of that. We were gonna move back to Canada, but to a place that has a low cost of living. I pretty much fell into a depression state. I tried to make the best of everything, but my parents were just tired.
I am probably one of the happiest people ever, I smile so much to the point where people think I’m crazy. But during the first 6 months I was a disaster, although I ended the school year with a 96% average. At this point I could sense that my dad was losing motivation so I decided to look for a job for him. I found one but it payed like shit. He got the job. His yearly salary is what we went through in less than one month before. My sister and I are in public schools which are complete garbage, and the people are mostly druggies and dumbasses. I haven’t seen my mom smile other than the times I make her laugh. And my dad seems to enjoy his job, although it’s what he was doing 20 years ago in terms of experience.
We saved enough money to put a downpayment on a house that costs less than the cars we used to have. My mom went back to college to get a degree so she can also help with our money problem. And soon I will do the same. I am just wishing my dad can find a job that fits his experience level and things can go back to normal.We have been living as cheaply as we can trying to make the best of things.
And the saddest part of all this is that I feel ashamed of it. It is a family secret and I cannot tell anyone, which is why I’m expressing my emotions on here. It really hurts when someone calls me poor, and I can’t defend myself because of a promise to my parents to keep our situation a secret. It really hurts to see your old friends living so lavishly spending thousands a week where you are unable to spend close to anything. It really hurts when all your friends are having a reunion to meet up and catch up with each other but you cant afford to fly out and stay in a hotel. It really hurts because my friends have started to catch on to why I’m the only one unable to visit and I don’t accept their offers to pay for me. It really hurts because my parents are very sensitive to this topic so I can’t talk to anyone about it. This whole situation hurts.
But I have learned to stop being a little bitch and man up. I am doing the best in school that I have ever done, 98% average this semester. While the people around me at school are busy doing and selling drugs, I am the only one mature enough to not want to ruin my future. I am the only one looking for legitimate ways to make extra money on the side so I don’t over whelm my parents. I am no longer depressed but I have the occasional sadness due to missing my old life. But this won’t be my situation for long. I know my dad will eventually find a better job and life will resume its norms. The only thing that motivates me now is the desire to never have this happen again in my life, the desire to learn from this mistake and be grateful for everything, the desire for my future kids to never have to experience what I did.
I guess you could say I am the boy who had no fear until he chased them.
Chicken and Sour Cream Enchiladas
Ingredients
- 1 (16 ounce) container sour cream, divided
- 2 cups chopped cooked chicken
- 8 ounces shredded Colby and Monterey jack cheese, divided
- 1 jar thick-n-chunky salsa, divided
- 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro (optional)
- 12 (6- to 8-inch) corn or flour tortillas
Instructions
- Mix one cup of sour cream, chicken, 1 cup of cheese, 1/4 cup salsa and cilantro together. Spoon about 1/4 cup of mixture into the center of each tortilla; roll up. Place, seam side down, in a 13 x 9-inch baking dish. Top with remaining salsa, cover.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.
- Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake an additional 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.
- Top with lettuce and tomato, if desired.
- Serve with remaining cup of sour cream.
Makes 6 servings.
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
My answer will be a little different than the other answers because I am not “very poor” or even poor for that matter, but I can tell you what it’s like to go from wealthy to struggling.
My husband has a prestigious job which requires a certain license, I’m omitting for privacy. He has his own business utilizing this license. Up until 2 years ago, things were financially wonderful. We traveled the world first class. Would spend Valentines at the Eiffel Tower, Chinese New Year in China, St. Patrick’s in Ireland etc. Sometimes we would travel to some exotic country by ourselves, come home and repack then take off the next day to some other exotic locale with our kids and Nannies. All first class of course. Shopping- ridiculous… almost every weekend we would head to the designer stores and drop thousands. My closet is the size of a bedroom and looks like a Chanel / Louis Vuitton/ Hermès/ Louboutin/ Prada/ YSL/ Gucci boutique. Surprises were always fun too- one time we were supposed to leave for Hawaii the next Morning but I was upset with my husband and threatening not to go. His response was coming home with a very expensive bottle of wine and a green box. The wine was great but the $45,000 rose gold Rolex inside it was better. It is my 4th Rolex and my favorite. We bought our dream 6000 square foot house and redid everything exactly how we wanted it. My credit card bill would be anywhere between $17,000 to $50,000 a month, which he would happily pay. We laughed at how ridiculous it was. We had 3 nanny/ housekeepers and 2 private chefs… don’t forget the Driver. Cars- let’s see..: 3 Maserati’s , Ferrari ($400K), Bentley, Escalade, BMW, Mercedes, Range Rover, Limo, Customised Mercedes Limo bus, 2 extremely nice boats etc. We were treated as VIP’s everywhere we went because everyone knew we were big spenders and big tippers. That all being said, on a scale of 1–10 I would have rated my happiness at a 2 or 3. You see my husband is a complete Narcissist and living with him is indescribable.
Now that things which I can’t describe have hit his business and it has taken a major downfall, things have changed drastically financially. The man who used to drop $4000 on bottle service in Dubai bitches at me if I spend $4 on Starbucks to the point that if I do treat myself, I have to hide it. Cars have been sold, staff has been let go shopping and traveling stopped. The party ended. If I had to rate my happiness now after the money is gone on a scale of 1–10, I would say it’s a 2 or 3- Exactly the same as before. You see as cliche as it is , money doesn’t buy happiness. I’m no less happy than I was before. Do I miss it? Everyday. It atleast gave me something to look forward to but it didn’t bring me happiness. Crying in a Maserati over a miserable marriage is not any less miserable than crying in regular car. If you want happiness, invest in good people in your life. Money comes and money goes.
US vs. THEM
“I’ll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. “I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.” “I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.” “Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding out both puppets!”” – Bill Hicks
Anyone who frequents Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, economic blogs, or fake news mainstream media channels knows our world is driven by the “Us versus Them” narrative. It’s almost as if “they” are forcing us to choose sides and believe the other side is evil. Bill Hicks died in 1994, but his above quote is truer today then it was then. As the American Empire continues its long-term decline, the proles are manipulated through Bernaysian propaganda techniques, honed over the course of decades by the ruling oligarchs, to root for their assigned puppets.
Most people can’t discern they are being manipulated and duped by the Deep State controllers. The most terrifying outcome for these Deep State controllers would be for the masses to realize it is us versus them. But they don’t believe there is a chance in hell of this happening. Their arrogance is palatable.
Their hubris has reached astronomical levels as they blew up the world economy in 2008 and successfully managed to have the innocent victims bail them out to the tune of $700 billion, pillaged the wealth of the nation through their capture of the Federal Reserve (QE, ZIRP), rigged the financial markets in their favor through collusion, used the hundreds of billions in corporate tax cuts to buy back their stock and further pump the stock market, all while their corporate media mouthpieces mislead and misinform the proles.
There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare. Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out “legal” payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions. The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote against a defense spending increase.
Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn’t grow to its immense size without financing from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus.
When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed.
I’ve never been big on joining a group. I tend to believe Groucho Marx and his cynical line, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”. The “Us vs. Them” narrative doesn’t connect with my view of the world. As a realistic libertarian I know libertarian ideals will never proliferate in a society of government dependency, willful ignorance of the masses, thousands of laws, and a weak-kneed populace afraid of freedom and liberty. The only true libertarian politician, Ron Paul, was only able to connect with about 5% of the voting public. There is no chance a candidate with a libertarian platform will ever win a national election. This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Bill Hicks somewhat foreshadowed the last election by referencing another famous cynic.
“I ascribe to Mark Twain’s theory that the last person who should be President is the one who wants it the most. The one who should be picked is the one who should be dragged kicking and screaming into the White House.” ― Bill Hicks
Hillary Clinton wanted to be president so badly, she colluded with Barack Obama, Jim Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch and numerous other Deep State sycophants to ensure her victory, by attempting to entrap Donald Trump in a concocted Russian collusion plot and subsequent post-election coup to cover for their traitorous plot. I wouldn’t say Donald Trump was dragged kicking and screaming into the White House, but when he ascended on the escalator at Trump Tower in June of 2015, I’m not convinced he believed he could win the presidency.
As the greatest self-promoter of our time, I think he believed a presidential run would be good for his brand, more revenue for his properties and more interest in his reality TV ventures. He was despised by the establishment within the Republican and Democrat parties. The vested interests controlling the media and levers of power in society scorned and ridiculed this brash uncouth outsider. In an upset for the ages, Trump tapped into a vein of rage and disgruntlement in flyover country and pockets within swing states, to win the presidency over Crooked Hillary and her Deep State backers.
I voted for Trump because he wasn’t Hillary. I hadn’t voted for a Republican since 2000, casting protest votes for Libertarian and Constitutional Party candidates along the way. I despise the establishment, so their hatred of Trump made me vote for him. His campaign stances against foreign wars and Federal Reserve reckless bubble blowing appealed to me. I don’t worship at the altar of the cult of personality. I judge men by their actions and not their words.
Trump’s first two years have been endlessly entertaining as he waged war against fake news CNN, establishment Republicans, the Deep State coup attempt, and Obama loving globalists. The Twitter in Chief has bypassed the fake news media and tweets relentlessly to his followers. He provokes outrage in his enemies and enthralls his worshipers. With millions in each camp it is difficult to find an unbiased assessment of narrative versus real accomplishments.
I’m happy he has been able to stop the relentless leftward progression of our Federal judiciary. Cutting regulations and rolling back environmental mandates has been a positive. Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement and TPP, forcing NATO members to pay their fair share, and renegotiating NAFTA were all needed. Ending the war on coal and approving pipelines will keep energy costs lower. His attempts to vet Muslims entering the country have been the right thing to do. Building a wall on our southern border is the right thing to do, but he should have gotten it done when he controlled both houses.
The use of tariffs to force China to renegotiate one sided trade deals as a negotiating tactic is a high-risk, high reward gamble. If his game of chicken is successful and he gets better terms from the Chicoms, while reversing the tariffs, it would be a huge win. If the Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global recession is a certainty. Who has the upper hand? Xi is essentially a dictator for life and doesn’t have to worry about elections or popularity polls. Dissent is crushed. A global recession and stock market crash would make Trump’s re-election in 2020 problematic.
I’m a big supporter of lower taxes. The Trump tax cuts were sold as beneficial to the middle class. That is a false narrative. The vast majority of the tax cut benefits went to mega-corporations and rich people. Middle class home owning families with children received little or no tax relief, as exemptions were eliminated and tax deductions capped. In many cases, taxes rose for working class Americans.
With corporate profits at all time highs, massive tax cuts put billions more into their coffers. They didn’t repatriate their overseas profits to a great extent. They didn’t go on a massive hiring spree. They didn’t invest in new facilities. They did buy back their own stock to help drive the stock market to stratospheric heights. So corporate executives gave themselves billions in bonuses, which were taxed at a much lower rate. This is considered winning in present day America.
The “Us vs. Them” issue rears its ugly head whenever Trump is held accountable for promises unkept, blatant failures, and his own version of fake news. Holding Trump to the same standards as Obama is considered traitorous by those who only root for their home team. Their standard response is that you are a Hillary sycophant or a turncoat to the home team. If you agree with a particular viewpoint or position of a liberal then you are a bad person and accused of being a lefty by Trump fanboys. Facts don’t matter to cheerleaders. Competing narratives rule the day. Truthfulness not required.
The refusal to distinguish between positive actions and negative actions when assessing the performance of what passes for our political leadership by the masses is why cynicism has become my standard response to everything I see, hear or read. The incessant level of lies permeating our society and its acceptance as the norm has led to moral decay and rampant criminality from the White House, to the halls of Congress, to corporate boardrooms, to corporate newsrooms, to government run classrooms, to the Vatican, and to households across the land. It’s interesting that one of our founding fathers reflected upon this detestable human trait over two hundred years ago.
“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”– Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine’s description of how moral mischief can ruin a society was written when less than 3 million people inhabited America. Consider his accurate assessment of humanity when over 300 million occupy these lands. The staggering number of corrupt prostituted sociopaths occupying positions of power within the government, corporations, media, military, churches, and academia has created a morally bankrupt empire of debt.
These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don’t care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president.
The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them. The answer to that question will strongly impact the direction and intensity of the climactic years of this Fourth Turning. What I’ve noticed is the shunning of those who don’t take an all or nothing position regarding Trump. If you disagree with a decision, policy, or hiring decision by the man, you are accused by the pro-Trump team of being one of them (aka liberals, lefties, Hillary lovers).
If you don’t agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the Trumpeteers. I don’t want to be Us or Them. I just want to be me. I will judge everyone by their actions and their results. I can agree with Trump on many issues, while also agreeing with Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi on other issues. I don’t prescribe to the cult of personality school of thought. I didn’t believe the false narratives during the Bush or Obama years, and I won’t worship at the altar of the Trump narrative now.
Oda Mae Brown $4 million Dollars!
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
It’s horrific but life changing in a positive way as well. I grew up on small town Ohio then moved to New York City and married a multimillionaire that worked in the finance industry. He showered me with gifts, a “scavenger hunt” with high end jewelry and designer bags in his apartment at One UN Plaza (where Derek Jeter and Jocelyn Wildenstein lived among other famous people). On our honeymoon, we traveled around the world first landing on the Burj Al Arab via helicopter, then off to The Maldives and Tahiti in one of those hits over the water. I was madly in love.
- I had an American Express Black Card (Centurian) that had no limit. I could walk into a store and buy pretty much whatever I wanted. The stores I used to walk into when I was broke and dream of even buying a simple dress we’re now falling all over me.
- Not worrying about how the rent was going to be paid, or bills is bizarre. This was something I worried about for most of my life and now money was like nothing. It’s like a huge weight off of you.
- We lived in penthouses in Soho,a home in the Hamptons, an apartment overlooking Central Park known as The Gossip Girl building. a multimillion dollar home in prestigious Locust Valley,
- I always drove a BMW 750 and once a custom 760.
- I shopped at Chanel, Fendi,and other high end stores.
So what happened? I was completely oblivious about finances mostly. I had access to the accounts but I wasn’t concerned about checking up on them and the money kept rolling in. Turns out we were spending as much as my husband made and after a few gaps in his employment we were now constantly stressed about how we would recover. We downsized, selling the Hamptons home,the Fifth Avenue apartment and stopped traveling. It wasn’t enough and toward the end of the marriage we were down to almost nothing. We are now divorcing, but not because of the money problem.
The differences?
- Rich people truly do get treated differently. They get better service, perks, and many other things. Everyone treats you with respect, your calls get returned immediately, everyone wants to be your friend, no one questions any claim you make since you’re rich and could not possibly be lying about anything. I was taken aback by the instant credibility.
- Once we separated and divorce proceedings began my husband stopped paying me any kind of support leaving me and our special needs daughter destitute. I often found myself without money for food
- We still live in a fancy condo (me and my daughter) and I still have the BMW. This makes people assume of course that I have millions of dollars. I’m constantly making excuses for why I can’t pay bills.
- Wealthy friends distance themselves. You stop being invited to parties and events.on the plus side people come out of the woodwork to offer support.
- I had the humiliating task of making trips to the pawn shop to get loans against jewelry. Thank god I had it though. I pulled up in front of a pawn shop on a regular basis in my $150,000 car. I recently sold my Cartier engagement ring at auction. For 12 years this was my most valued possession,something I promised my daughter since she was a toddler, and now it’s gone.
- I stress about money every day. My identity has been completely stripped from me. My 11 year old daughter has known nothing but wealth her entire life so this is very anxiety provoking for her.
What’s positive?
- I don’t care about material things so much. It’s just stuff and much of it a waste of money. I look at money very differently.
- My friends that left were never really my friends at all so I’ve lost nothing.
- I’ve had a lot of personal growth. I was always empathetic but now even more and I’m extremely non judgemental. People make decisions that many people don’t understand, but I can relate to almost anything.
- I’m much more aware of the struggles of homeless people and minorities.
- I’ve taken inventory of the people in my life and “cut the fat”. I don’t need fake friends and I’m completely disinterested in ““the scene”.
The moral of the story: Wealth has nothing to do with you. People who have money and think they’re treated well and have tons of wealthy friends because they’re so wonderful are kidding themselves. Not that you are not a bad person, you could be the kindest, most generous person on the planet, but people are treating you that way because of the money. Maybe they think you can do something for them someday. Who knows. You would be absolutely stunned at the people who hit the road once you don’t have it anymore. Have more friends that don’t care. Be aware of people’s motives. Focous more on being the best person you can be rather than the newest designer bag. Money comes and goes.
For anyone that feels the need to comment, selling the house and car are complicated in a divorce. Yes, I have an excellent attorney. This is a process.
A Culture Of Corruption
What we think of culture is a system and a system is a collection of rules for how interdependent group of items interact with one another. This results in the whole possessing a set of unique properties. An accounting system is a set of formal rules based on the accepted standards of accounting. The habits of the accounting department, the culture of the department, is an unwritten set of rules for governing the behavior of the people in the department.
Most of life is governed by the unwritten rules. You can see this in something as simple as driving a car. In the United States, the written rules of the road are the same from state to state, but the unwritten rules are quite different. In Texas, drivers will stand on the brakes to let someone merge into traffic, while in Massachusetts people regularly drive on the shoulder to prevent it. The driving culture in New England is different from the driving culture of other parts of America.
Cultural shifts, changes in those unwritten rules, happen when key players within the culture decide to violate those rules. Maybe it is self-interest that drives the change, or maybe it is simply the declining utility of the old rules, but important people begin to violate those unwritten rules. Because humans are social animals, the rest follow the lead of the important people and the culture changes. The fashion industry has counted on this reality since its inception.
A classic example of a cultural shift was Watergate. The sorts of shenanigans done by the Nixon people during the 1972 election were considered normal and then all of a sudden they were declared beyond the pale. Prior to that time, the FBI was prohibited from getting directly involved in politics. Then all of a sudden, they were plotting with the Washington Post to overthrow the president. Those unwritten rules of political conduct suddenly changed and Nixon was removed.
Another example from politics comes from the 1990’s. Current affairs programming followed a set of unwritten rules. It was supposed to be a calm exchange of views, hosted by a moderator who pretended to be objective. The Clintons showed up in Washington and this changed. All of a sudden Clinton people were flinging their pooh at the moderator and anyone else on stage. It did not take long before this became the new normal and now all shows are pooh flinging contests.
This week, Tucker Carlson is doing shows on the hidden surveillance tapes from the Capitol on January 6th. These tapes had been hidden from public view by the Democrats until the Republicans took control of the House. Kevin McCarthy, the new Speaker, let the production team of the Tucker Carlson Show review the 40,000 hours of footage and this week they are reporting on it. They also have permission to show clips of that hidden footage in their reporting.
So far, nothing earth shattering has been revealed. The guy who showed up wearing animal skins, the QAnon Shaman, is seen being given a guided tour by the police, who seem to be having a blast leading the guy around the building. The QAnon Shaman is now in prison, doing four years for allegedly leading a violent insurrection. He was not allowed to have access to this footage in his defense, because in America the accused are no longer entitled to defend themselves in court.
This is where you see one of those cultural shifts. Most people reading this remember when such a thing would be a massive scandal. The judge and the prosecutors would have been reviled as fascists for denying this man a right to a defense. Of course, the media would have been demanding the footage from the beginning. Instead, they are up in arms over Tucker having access to the material. They fear he may create a “dangerous narrative” using these tapes.
The media was always biased. We used to be more mature about this and accept that politics is about friends and enemies. In the colonial times, everyone knew the bias of the newspapers and thought nothing of it. Then all of a sudden there was a culture shift and we were supposed to pretend the media was neutral. They were the fourth estate, speaking truth to power. We have just experienced another culture shift. The media is totally corrupt, using power to obscure the truth.
Another example of the culture shift is in the tapes. Tucker showed a scene from the J6 show trial in Congress. One of the politicians showed a clip of Senator Josh Hawley running from the building like a little girl. It turns out that the video was heavily edited by the Democrats. Hawley was with a group of other pols being herded out by the police and he was the last guy to leave. In other words, the Congress doctored a video and presented it under oath to the public as fact.
Everyone has always accepted that politicians lie. The reason they lie is to get elected, avoid scandal, or avoid responsibility. In other words, self-interest. This is the nature of all human activity and everyone accepted it. Doctoring video and presenting it as fact in order to promote a crazy narrative is something different. In a prior age, the people involved would be facing criminal charges. After all, they charged Roger Clemens for lying to Congress not so long ago.
More importantly, they doctored video to make a sitting Senator look like a sissy and then used the hearing to broadcast it to the world. It appears they worked with the media to promote this lie. Ten years ago, this was so beyond the pale that no one would have considered it. Now all of a sudden, the culture controlling the House and Senate has changed and this is now the new normal. How long before they move onto assassinating one another?
None of this is startling for people on this side of the divide, but it underscores an important point about the current crisis. The corruption at the top is so deep and so pervasive that the time for reform has now passed. How can the system reform itself when the people running it are so thoroughly corrupt? How could a genuine reformer work with people who are so corrupt? How can you fix the rules when the culture has evolved to reject the very idea of rules?
In the fullness of time, the ape historians will look at the 1980’s as a time for choosing, when the political class struggled to redefine itself. They could have gone down the road of reform and prepared for the word after the Cold War. Instead they signed on with the Clintons and the road to perdition. That has led to the flowering of a culture of corruption at the top of the political order. That is why J6 terrified them. They have known this long before that protest.
The Duran
Seems that the Langley Boyz have targeted the Duran team (Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou
Apparently someone has been uploading edited versions of their videos and even misused them to setup scammy sales…and then in the comments someone (most likely a Langley Boy himself) is trying to slander the Chinese by saying this was done on Chinese social media…
Given the CIA jerks seem to infiltrate Chinese social media to send out their BS, my guess is that such uploads are done by them to slander both the Duran team and the Chinese people!
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
When I was a baby, my parents had a big house with 2 maids, a cook, a nurse for the children, 2 gardeners, a gateman, and a driver. There were parties almost every night. I woke to the strains of Strauss waltzes as the maids polished the ballroom floors with mops on their feet. The house was so big that my mother’s parents and 2 couples who worked for my father lived with us.
Then my father moved away to Japan and my mother made do with a much smaller house for us four children and only the nurse, who was an excellent cook and saintly about working and teaching us how to be polite and kind. I was still only 2, so everything seemed fine to me.
From then on, our fortunes fluctuated depending on my father’s finances, from only enough money to buy one pound of beef for the 7 of us (my mother had another baby at 40 when I was 10), which meant I did the childcare, housework and the cooking until I was 18 and escaped to Brown on a full scholarship. My father ended up developing 1 square mile of Shanghai and 2 square miles of Beijing at the end of his life, but that money was stolen by his employee when he died.
My life since has been sometimes rich, sometimes so poor that I was living on $10 a week at the end of the month. Honestly, those fluctuations never affected my emotions. Money comes and goes, it does not mean anything as far as your self respect is concerned. Enjoy the good weather, activities that are available to you, friends, family. I now like to walk, read good books, watch Netflix, play bridge, get together with friends and especially with my brothers who were so good to their baby sister when I was young. I feel very fortunate.
China warns, guardrails are coming off
Confessions Of Dudes Who Used Unproven Techniques To Enlarge Their Manhood
1. So I’ve been using a penis pump for about 3 years now, and also using extenders (that keep your penis stretched for long periods of time), as well as manual exercises here and there.
It has worked for me…but very slowly and takes a lot of time. I have gained about an inch in girth, and a bit more than half an inch in length during these years. that’s unpumped and under normal conditions.
It takes a lot of time and effort, and honestly, if you are doing this for women or whatever, it won’t be worth it. It’s better to invest your time in that actual woman, hanging out, having sex, ect. But I like pumping, and women tend to dislike it, but some like it now and then.
Pumping does give your temporary gains, and those temporary gains can get more and more significant the more you pump. Those temporary gains are a blast to me. I know it’ll “deflate” back to normal in some hours, but it’s a blast while it’s large. it gets addictive, too. You try to chase that huge pump you had a few days ago, but your body just isn’t there sometimes. It’s like working out. Somedays you can run 10 miles and feel great, or your breaking personal lifting records. Somedays you can barely put a dent in your usual routine.
In my opinion, I think stretching is the most effective way to enlarge the penis. The issue is, manual stretches can give you some gains when you first start (some of those early games is just stretching the ligaments attached to your penis, bring it “out” more). but after that, it takes a lot more time to get more and more gains. So extenders are useful, you wear them under your clothes and such, but are uncomfortable, annoying, difficult to fit, and expensive.
2. When I was younger around 18-19 I was really insecure about my penis size, mostly because I watched A LOT of porn and thought that every girl could only get off with a mandingo sized dick. This obviously led to a lot of insecurity about my penis size which was average at around 5.5″. So one day I remember seeing one of those porn site ads “grow your penis up to 8″ in a month!” and figured what the hell a month is no time at all and I’ll have a monster dong in 4 weeks! So I went to the site and bought one, $120 if I remember correctly which was a lot of money for me at the time. I remember ordering and then canceling the order about twice out of fear, then I guess I finally said screw it, ordered it and walked away.
The next day I got the shipping update and I nervously began pacing around my parents house plotting how to get the big brown box from the mail box to my room unnoticed so no one would ask “whats in the box” and leave me red faced and stammering while coming up with something to say. Few days go by and the mail comes, I bolt out the door to the mailbox, grabbed the box, dropped about 3 envelopes on the ground and bolt back inside. The mail on the ground was a casualty of war and I left it behind.
Anyways so I had it in my hands, it was a bathmate or something like that, a water penis pump. I went to the shower and began pumping the shit out of my dick. Hurt like a son of a bitch, felt like I put my dick in a shopvac and my insides were being pulled out through my urethra. But I could tell my dick was getting bigger already so I suffered through the pain. 15 minutes later I pop the thing off and my god was my dick engorged! It was the dick of my dreams, little did I know the results only lasted a couple hours but in that time I had to of jerked it about 5 times, and stood in the mirror staring at it for another 30 minutes before it shrunk back down to a stub. So I pumped for a month and actually saw some result, was thicker mostly. I kept at it for maybe another 3-4 months consistently and kept an eye on my “gains” and to my surprise my dick was actually growing. But one day I got a little too cocky and over pumped and my dick started hurting along the right side and I was properly freaked out. I quit right then and there and threw the damn thing away after breaking it into tiny pieces so that it couldn’t be recognized. All in all, my dick did grow, it’s about 6.5″ now and slightly more girthy.
Would I do it again? Hell no, its not worth it. After my penis injury scare I realized that its more embarrassing having to go to the hospital and tell them that I broke my dick in a penis pump than it is to have a average sized dick. After I got laid for the first time at 20 (late bloomer) I realized dick size didn’t even matter to most women and if it did that they aren’t the type of person I would want a relationship with anyways. I now have more self confidence than I did but I don’t contribute any of that to my magnum dong.
3. Just this May, I was with a new girlfriend from university. We’d been together only three weeks but we’d had sex quite a number of times. While she was giving me oral sex, she told me that my penis was a lot smaller than the other guys she’s been with. Let me be clear that she was literally holding it while she said this.
Now I didn’t know how to take this. Stupid, insecure me being a hopeless romantic wanted to improve myself for my girlfriend. I’m fairly normal in terms of size, 5.75 long and 5 around, but I was seriously hurt by this comment.
I went online and found a website claiming to increase your size. These guys preached a technique called jelqing, and the idea is to grip your shaft from the base at around 50% erection and milk it. So I did this ‘jelqing’ for two weeks, following some regimen they had for beginners.
At the end of the second week, I woke up to find that I could no longer get hard. I assumed maybe I overworked it, whatever. This lasted for five days and I was panicking. The day I went to a clinic to find out what was wrong, I was finally getting erections again at about 30%. They referred me to a urologist and I explained to him what happened. He said to take a rest for 6 weeks, hopefully everything will be okay.
6 weeks passes and I still can’t achieve a full erection. My maximum was 70% and I was having weird symptoms with my member. I had developed a torsion of maybe 10 degrees, as in the head was rotated. Nothing too grotesque as I’ve seen other guys born with this naturally, but it just wasn’t straight anymore. The other symptom led to seaches online pointing to something called ‘hard flaccid,’ something not medically recognized as a real symptom. My penis would not go soft basically. It felt rubbery and stiff all the time, and it only relaxed to what I was used to if I was urinating or laying down on my back. It’s resistant to being moved and prevents me from getting an erection while standing up.
I saw two more urologists and two clinic doctors and told them what was going on. I made sure to be clear about the exact motions I made when I was trying this jelqing nonsense. One told me to have a cystoscopy done and the other said to take another 2 months rest. Cystoscopy came out clear. He still had no idea what was going on and said take a few months’ rest like the other doctor said.
Now, I’ve got another urologist appointment with the cystoscopy urologist in December after rest. He’s probably going to schedule me for a pelvic MRI but we have no idea what’s going on. There’s apparently no scar tissue, but my penis is stiff unless I’m resting on my back or after urinating.
Obviously my gf broke up the week after I had my issue. I don’t blame her for anything, it was my own insecurities that led me to my decision. I’m a young guy who didn’t know how to deal with the situation and I ended up doing something stupid. I’ve been majorly abstinent over the course of these four months or so. I didn’t touch anything down there until about two weeks ago. It’s been a challenge but I’m putting my health first.
Please be happy with what you have. Don’t let other people put you down and recognize that a good partner would accept you for who you are. Be secure in what you’ve been given. A small, working dick will always be better than a broken 7-inches.
4. Not enlargement but once tried a weird knock-off viagra bought online. Gave me the dongest of dongs for a good few hours but also made my vision go BLUE. Everything BLUE. Slept it off and woke up to normal vision.
Looked in the mirror — left pupil about twice the size of the right. That was 6 years ago. Left pupil still a constant 20% or so larger than the right to this day, so I guess I enlarged something…
5. I tried stamina-rx. I bought it from the gas station and was super anxious so I thought I’d give it a test run before the big show. Well about 30 minutes later I started sweating my ass off, my face was flushed, my heart starting beating out of my chest, and I got the worst stomach ache ever. I was only 18 and couldn’t tell my mom I was dying because of dick pills, so I laid on the floor and accepted that this was how I was going to die.
Oh and I never got any benefit either. All the side effects, on the brink of death with a soft dick. I did jelq for 2-3 years and that did help a lot but I took it too far and injured myself. I cut that shit out and just chilled on jacking willy so much.
6. Yeah they work, but it is very possible to overdo it and permanently damage yourself.
With a pump you can gain about an inch in girth and length before it becomes unnatural – thing is if you have a foreskin that will balloon when you thrust and you’ll end up stuck. Not the greatest thing in the world… especially if you unkindly wind up accidentally hitting cervix even without using any “enhancement.”
Now, you may think that knotting your GF or wife sounds fun, and it is. Thing is, it is her body and it is seriously not cool to be stuck in someone who is having instant regret.
That isn’t permanent, some people say it can be but I’m pretty sure they’re exaggerating. On the plus side, they make you super sensitive, and can be used on women as well… just don’t overdo it.
Tension machines take much much longer and have permanent results. Thing is, they can result in ED. Those are mostly recommended for medical applications – and they are effective. They suck for foreplay.
7. I used a pump about 3 times a week over the period of 4 or 5 months. I gained like a quarter inch in length. Also it stays a bit bigger when flaccid now which is kind of nice. The purpose was actually more to gain girth which didn’t happen at all.
The catch was that I got some minor stretch marks on my shaft. Not from the permanent growth, but from the swelling while pumping. I think I could have avoided them if I hadn’t pumped as hard. Some people also do things like wear condoms while pumping to keep the swelling down.
Anyway, the marks faded over time and they aren’t noticeable, so I don’t have too deep of regrets. But I don’t think I’d recommend it. You’re not going to go from small to average, or from average to big or anything. There’s more damage to be done than good.
Definitely DON’T TRY THIS!! I lost my ability to get and keep a normal erection at the age of 18 (I’m 25 now), lost almost all sensitivity in my penis. Fucked up my sexual life. I was struggling with suicidal thoughts for years. Doing therapy has helped but the stigma is still there.
I didn’t treat the problem at the time because of shame, lack of money and health insurance. How do you explain your parents and friends that you have ED for such a stupid accident??
The funny thing is that I initially came across those exercises (jelqing and stretching, the latter caused the worst damage) while searching how to straighten the curvature, not for an enlargement method. Even though I’m slightly below average, it wasn’t a big deal (no pun intended).
I needed to get this off my chest. Please, don’t make the same mistake I did. It’s not worth taking the risk
8. First off, they don’t work as people think they would. There’s usually stuff in it that increases the flow of blood, so your penis looks more swelled up. They also usually contain zinc, which makes you cum more. Some of the herbs make you last longer.
All of those three things is good for your self-confidence. And so, in a weird way, they so work! However, I cannot recommend it to anyone.
It’s way better to take your multi-vitamins, drink lots of water, exercise regularly, wear loose underwear and generally be aware of penile health. Manscaping is also a very solid option. It’ll not only make it look bigger, its more appealing to almost every woman I’ve ever met.
But the most important thing is to be happy about your dick. I’ve got an average (5 inch) penis, but I was convinced I couldn’t satisfy any woman ever. And honestly, when I was under that impression, it killed my self confidence and I couldn’t act sexy because I didn’t feel sexy.
So, fuck all the nonsense. Your dick is your dick. Most probably, it’s fine. If it is too short, learn how to go down on your partner. Treat that pussy like a temple. Get some toys. This is the 21st century my man, there’s a ton of options s available!
Confidence is more than the size of your dick. Read books, have opinions. Instead of wasting your money of those shitty pills, upgrade your wardrobe. Be happy with yourself. Women find that damn sexy.
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
I grew up in Australia, the youngest of 4 children and second-hand EVERYTHING was normal. We had a roof over our heads & adequate food to eat but no luxuries or extras at all.
I had my first child at 18 and I promised him, he would have more than I did.
My boyfriend and I started with nothing but with hard work and sacrifice we saved for our first home. We both had pretty average jobs but we saved hard and eventually bought a second home. By chance in the early 2000’s both houses (in different states) doubled in value. We bought a third apartment but we managed our rental properties ourselves and when a tenant did not pay their rent, it made things hard for us personally to make mortgage repayments.
We sold the apartment at a small profit to relieve some financial pressure. We bought another house and with a lot of hard work we had almost paid it off in about 8 years.
We decided to sell our home as both our children had finished school and were becoming financially independent. So we rented while we thought about what we wanted to do.
A ‘friend’ at work had told me about his new venture. He had purchased NRAS (National Rental Affordability Scheme) titles where as an investor, we could build a dwelling, rent it out to lower income bracket and the government would pay an extra 20% direct to us tax free (that was the gist of it anyway). It sounded great!
After 2 years of waiting, the plans had changed but it still seemed like a good idea so we invested our money. Basically, we get a loan to build. They do all the groundwork. At the end of build, we split things 50/50.
We built 2 duplex projects, a 5 unit and 6 unit dwellings over the period of 7 years. We didn’t take any profit, just rolled it over to next build. We invested over $200,000 of our own money and should have had profit exceeding $400,000.
It wasn’t in the millions but it was more money than I had ever had & I finally felt like I was successful and rich!
Then in April 2017 it all came crashing down. Along with 40 other investors we lost everything when the company went into liquidation. Administrators have taken everything in their fees, and unbeknownst to me, when my last property sold (in June 2016) the company didn’t pay $100,000 GST owed to Australian Taxation Office. So now they are chasing me for it and it goes up by thousands every month.
I feel like a failure. I feel stuck. I am ashamed that I have done this to my family.
But, my husband of 20 years has been my rock. Our relationship since this happened is the strongest it has ever been.
My children understand that things are hard at the moment and don’t have any financial expectations.
My parents have been so supportive and have never once said ‘ I told you so’. In fact, they told me a story about their own financial mistakes and how they overcome them.
I have love, I have my health, I have my family.
I’m going to be Ok.
TSMC restarts China factory
https://youtu.be/hq5XcA6vctM
AI ‘Bot hits Quora
I find the answers interesting. Detailed. But so very bland. No passion…
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
I can tell the experience of a friend. who married a woman who was multi-millionaire since birth. Saying that they were rich is an understatement. They only flew first or business class, he got a new Porsche or Mercedes every single year and they always lived in the best areas in Manhattan,
I remember when he and his wife moved to New York they hired an interior designer from Milan to do the decoration. They spent around a million dollars only with the renovation and furniture for the apartment.
They had it all, and not even in my dreams I would imagine that one day they would lose it all.
However, like many other stories, they didn’t lose it overnight, but little by little.
I never imagined they would lose all their money because apart of being filthy rich, they were really lucky.
My friend’s wife grew up being a millionaire. Annual trips to Aspen with her family, then summer in Europe and everything we imagine rich people do. I was lucky to enjoy some of these perks when I was invited to one of their vacation homes.
They had a lot of money but they didn’t work. After all, they never needed to do it. She received a monthly allowance from her family that I believe was around 700K to 1M per year so they would probably not bother to work 9 to 6 to make $100K more.
They lived this life for around 10 years. Then, they had some disagreement with their family and they stopped receiving the allowance. They lived by their savings for around 3 years. During those years they lived a very good life, but not so lavish as before. After 3 years, when they were about to start selling everything so they could have some money, her uncle died. He didn’t have any kids so she received a good sum of money that was sufficient for around 3 more years.
When their bank accounts were about to run dry again her mother passed away and she inherited, along with her brothers, around 4M each.
For most people, it would be sufficient for a lifetime, but they made very bad investments along with some poor decisions and I don’t know how, but they ended up losing everything in around 3 more years.
After losing all their money they started living with the money of a trust her parents left to her, Something around 5K per month. But they are on their 50s, they never worked and have no professional skills and they have to pay rent (as they don’t have a home), pay all their bills and above all, health insurance with that amount.
I saw them around 6 months ago and they were miserable. My friend developed a neurological disease due to the stress he endured in the last years. His wife was making all decisions as he wasn’t able to do it anymore. Unfortunately, he is so sick that he couldn’t work even if he wanted to.
I was really sad it happened to them because they were really nice people, It’s easy to judge them for never bothered to have a job or be wiser with their money, however, she was born in a different universe for most of us. What we see as a lavish lifestyle she sees as a regular day since birth.
I asked them if they needed anything and obviously what they need is their old lifestyle back. They moved to a modest apartment in a different state.
She told me that the biggest issue is that they don’t know how to live like that. She can’t imagine what’s like to do their own grocery shopping, and worst than that, go to Walmart with a shopping list. She said that if she spent a little more on things she like she might not have money for the supermarket next week.
I would not dare to say that this experience was humbling to them because they were always nice people, the difference is that they were nice people with lots of money. The only positive thing I believe this experience brought to them is that they are no longer superficial. They used to see everything like poverty, sorrow, and problems from a different perspective, and I used to see them through a mask that looked like they were using all the time
Now, for the first time, I was able to see who they really are. What are their emotions, their fears, their desires, and their regrets… For the first time in their lives they desire things, they no longer pull their credit card and immediately satisfy their desires and in that sense, they look like real people for me.
Every time I visited them over the years I always invited them for lunch, breakfast or coffee and even though I’m not wealthy I always offered to pay, and 6 months ago, when I saw them for the last time, I invited them to have a coffee at Starbucks and that was the first time in more than 15 years that they said thank you after I offered to pay for our breakfast.
It felt different. They don’t need to thank me for anything because during their life, just by inviting me to stay with them, they offered me much more than anything I’ve ever offered to them, but for the first time in their lives, they are learning to value every small good thing that life gives to them.
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UPDATE
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Thank you all for the upvotes and feedbacks to this story. In fact, I had two stories about the theme but Quora doesn’t allow to publish two answers for the same question, so, for those who are interested I’ll post the second story here.
In 2007 I was hired by a medium size tech company. The company had around 150 employees and they were growing fast. When I was hired they told me they would be moving to better offices in two months and they really did it. The new office was really impressive. Huge, very modern to the point it made the cover of a magazine.
My boss and her husband were the owners of the company. They were simply amazing. She was sweet, very polite and it was a pleasure to work for them. They were also very rich. In fact, she was so down to earth that it took me two months to realize that she was one of the owners of the company. It happened one day that we had a meeting with a client and she told me if I was OK to be squeezed on the back seat of her car, as another person was coming with us. I Imagined that she had one of those very small cars, but she showed up on a brand new convertible Porsche .
Little by little, we became acquainted. They invited me to have dinner one night and I was impressed by how rich they really were, They lived on a mansion, the land was so big that they had a tennis court, swimming pool and a stable with 5 horses on their land. He also was a motor enthusiast and had 9 cars. They owned a farm and a beach house in another city, even though we lived in one of the most beautiful beach cities in the world.
They made money fast because I was hired in 2007 and the company was founded in 2002 and it looked like they had a good lifestyle for some years.
They were amazing people, very humble, very calm and you would never say they had so much money just by talking to them.
I left the company by the end of 2007 because I received an offer to work in another place. I talked to them before accepting the offer, I explained my reasons and they were really supportive and told me that if I changed my mind the doors would be open.
By the end of 2008, a former colleague contacted me asking for a reference as he was leaving the company. I asked why he was leaving the company and the told me that the company had gone into receivership. Basically, they were impacted by the GFC.
They were so rich that I imagined that although the company had bankrupted they probably had a lot of savings.
I never heard from them again until 2017.
I had a health issue and I needed to see a specialist. When I got to the doctor, I was talking to the receptionist when I saw a sign with her name over her desk. (Let’s say Jennifer Parker – I’ll omit her real name). So I said to her. Hey Jennifer, what a coincidence, I had a boss with exactly the same name.
Then she told me that she was not Jennifer, that Jennifer was the other receptionist, that she worked Monday and Tuesday and Jenniffer Wednesday to Friday. I saw the doctor and two weeks later I came back for my return and when I arrived who I see working as a receptionist there? My former boss.
When she saw me she recognized me and told me that the other receptionist told what happened and when she saw my name she connected the dots.
She told me what happened to the company, basically was a problem with the contracts they made and as they weren’t able to get a new loan from the bank they could no longer keep the company and pay their debts. With that, they lost everything, not only the company but literally everything.
Their kids moved from private to public schools, they had all their cars, properties and assets confiscated and ended moving to a small apartment near the city. Her husband was able to get a new job (at nearly 60 years of age) and she had to go back to work to complement their income.
It was a huge surprise for me because you always expect that these things will happen to bad people, but never to nice people like them. They were honest, decent, hardworking, family oriented, and everybody in the office liked them.
Coincidentally I bumped into them again 3 months later in the mall. What surprised me the most is that they were able to go from a very rich to a very modest lifestyle without changing who they were. We sit together to have lunch in the food court and they were living like that was the life they always had. They were exactly the same people I met 10 years before, they were happy, making jokes with their kids (that were teenagers by then) and even when she told me what happened she didn’t do it with sadness.
I don’t know how they managed everything so well. Going through an experience like that could be very damaging, but it looks like they had a way to cope with everything.
It taught me a lesson that money can’t be trusted, life can be full of unexpected events with many things out of our control.
Cheese Enchiladas with Chili Gravy
Ingredients
Chili Gravy
- 2 tablespoons shortening
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 2 tablespoons chili powder (Gebhardt if possible)
- 3 cups warm water
- Salt to taste
Enchiladas
- 12 corn tortillas
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 large onions, chopped
- 4 cups grated cheese
Instructions
- Lightly grease a 13 x 9-inch baking dish. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Chili Gravy: Melt shortening in skillet. Stir in flour, make a light roux. Add chili powder, water and salt. Cook until thick. The gravy will vary according to what brand of chili powder you use.
- Enchiladas: Heat oil in skillet. Using kitchen tongs, dip each tortilla in hot oil until well softened (about 15 seconds). Hold tortilla up to drain. Using tongs dip tortillas in hot chili gravy. Place tortillas in pan, put a good pinch onions and cheese in the middle and roll the tortilla, placing the flop side down. Continue filling and rolling tortillas until pan is full. Pour more chili gravy on top of the enchiladas, sprinkle the top generously with more cheese and pop into a preheated oven to bake until cheese begins to bubble, about 10 minutes.
- Serve immediately.
Can the U.S. mobilize 10 million troops to crush China?
The USA couldn’t mobilize a kegger let alone a military operation. Those days are over. Most of what is called “the United States States” is smoke and mirrors, magnified a million times by control of the social media via algorithm.
It’s difficult, you know, to discern which are accurate questions asked by sincere people, and question-’bots programmed to spew a narrative to the public in the form of questions.
Most of us ignore these questions. But every now and again, we feel compelled to stamp some truth on top of them to keep the audience in check.
Most people are unaware how formidable Asia is right now, and this ignorance is getting more profound with each passing minute. Soon, the lemmings will march in unison toward their death, and the West will be a snot-stained page in the history books.
What does it feel like to become poor after being wealthy?
I guess I can’t say I was “rich” (since my net worth was never really all that high) but I was a consistent $250k a year earner for about 3 years who once had over $100k in cash. Not bad for a single guy with no family obligations
I had worked for years in a fairly low-paying career (at least in the city I live in) that requires passion in order to be done well, and I had none. I settled for it, and anyone who knows me knows I am not a settler (probably why I have been single most of my life!) I could never get ahead. Was always living paycheck to paycheck. Knew I had to do something different if I was ever going to “make it” but had no idea what that was. I felt the job really gave me no transferable skills
In the fall of 2007, I stumbled upon something called “affiliate marketing” online. Basically, companies will pay you a commission (often 50–75%) if you can drive sales for them. Bounced around from method-to-method for a while, but finally stuck to something that I was confident would bring me some money. Maybe not life changing income, but for the time being, enough to maybe coverage my mortgage. (Which, come to think about it, WOULD BE life changing income for what I was making)
In one month, I wrote probably 300 articles and submitted them to what was at the time a very high-traffic article directory. Made $600. It was the most rewarding $600 I had ever made
Eventually, I had saved enough to feel comfortable buying traffic online, and that was a real game changer. Started making probably $12k per month, in addition to my job, which I was now REALLY starting to hate because I didn’t need it anymore. Or so I thought
Put in my resignation in February 2010. A week later, I got caught in Google Adwords’ war on affiliate marketers, and my account was banned. I wasn’t doing anything shady, but others had, and they basically just started blanket-banning many affiliates. And since they provided 95% of my traffic, I was up a creek with no paddle. Had to put my tail between my legs and ask for my job back. Fortunately, they never wanted me to leave in the first place
Took about 2.5 years, but I built it up again, using different methods. And this time, multiple traffic sources! I was ready to quit again. I wasn’t making great money, but it was a comfortable living, and I felt deep down this was what I had to do
Then, right as I had made the decision to officially quit, I hit a windfall. $45k in a month. And things changed
Now, just quitting and having freedom wasn’t enough. I wanted it all. Dream car, vacations, a much nicer place. And I got all those things. I eventually rented an apartment in one of the premier buildings in my city, bought a Porsche (albeit a used one at half of its original cost)
And needless to say, I quit my job
The $45k months lasted only a couple months, but I was still pulling in at least 3.5X what my job paid me. And while I don’t want to say I went crazy with the money (because I always knew I needed a cushion, being self-employed in a volatile business), I basically was living a dream life (at least for me). Friend calls me two weeks in advance to go Miami? Done. Fly to sporting events? No problem. Buying flashy sport coats that gave me lots of attention from females? Give me as many as I can get my hands on
I woke up pretty much every day with a smile on my face, thinking, “what more am I going to create today to pad my bank account? What new, exciting experiences will I undertake?” Sure, there were bumps in the road along the way, but I always seemed to find something even better, including one online campaign that was bringing me a consistent $30–60k a month. But there was a catch…
This income was EXTREMELY volatile. Online traffic sources were starting to be a real pain. I knew this particular gravy train wasn’t going to continue long-term. I knew I needed something more stable. And that’s where everything started to unravel
I had an opportunity to hire one of the real heavy hitters in my market to create my own product. The goal was to no longer be an affiliate and having to worry about a company stopping their affiliate program, or traffic sources not liking affiliates (namely Google). His price was steep ($6k a month) but I knew he knew his stuff, plus someone in my network had worked with him before and raved about him. He co-founded a company that did 8 figures a year, although to be honest, that wasn’t really even on my radar. I just wanted something where I didn’t have to sleep with one eye open
Had my family, even my ex-girlfriend pray that he would take me on. And he did
In July of 2015, the gravy train really started producing much less gravy. Still decent money, but not enough when you’re paying someone $6k a month, not to mention you know you’ll have to spend a lot of money on traffic to get a good return on investment. And mind you, our product was a couple months off schedule
Finally, a month later, it went online, and it was a money pit from the start. There were only a handful of days where I even made a small profit. I knew it would take time, but now, time wasn’t something I had a lot of. We made tweak after tweak, but nothing worked. I started having strong anxiety, and in March of 2016, I told my biz partner we needed to get this thing profitable soon, or else I was going to have to pull the plug. I didn’t want to give up on it (especially considering I had put just about everything I had into it). The only thing that was keeping me from totally going crazy was that the gravy train was still bringing me a solid income
Then April 6th happened
Had just returned from a much needed vacation to see my alma mater play in the college basketball Final Four (mind you, I was much more thrifty on this trip than the ones I had taken in years past). Got a call from the one remaining affiliate program that was bringing me income that it was over
And just about everything has been a downward spiral from there
Ended my lease on that beautiful apartment with bay views and floor-to-ceiling windows to move back to my 650 square foot condo with low ceilings and a horribly outdated kitchen. Sold the Porsche and didn’t even have a car for three months because I was too scared to put a down-payment. Had no idea what to do next. Tried to make my product work on my own (my former “partner” and I parted ways shortly after. Amicably, as I don’t blame him for what happened, although we don’t really talk anymore because my sub-conscious probably has some resentment toward him for this failing so miserably). For the most part, it just continued to bleed me dry, although I did find a way to squeeze about $3k a month in profit from it. My parents eventually took mercy on me and bought me a former rental car so I could drive for Uber and Lyft, an opportunity I am grateful for, but a dangerous job and somewhat degrading, considering my former life
I now suffer from nearly constant anxiety and depression. Depressed over what my life used to be like compared to what it is now, anxious about what the future holds. Savings are almost gone, piled up major credit card debt, I have no idea what job I could even do (trust me, the money I made online, just about anyone with half a brain could have done it) and whether anyone would even hire me with the way my emotional state is these days. But there is also anxiety about whether I can ever be happy again, especially if I don’t come close to making it back to where I was before. Will I ever get back my fun-loving, optimistic spirit? I just turned 40 in March, and would love to meet the woman of my dreams and start a family, but who of value would want to date a guy my age in my situation?
As I’m sure is the case with many others, going from high income to barely scraping by stripped me of most of my self-worth. I remember talking to a VERY successful friend of mine back in 2010 when I first started to make five figures a month. He said “man, you’re so much more confident now.” And I told him “I agree, but I don’t want just want to be that way because I’m a higher earner now.” This guy is a very positive person who has made millions in the personal development space, but even he said “I hate to say this, but that’s just the reality of being a male”
Most achievements we strive for are a letdown on some level, and yes, I would include being well-off in this. I wouldn’t say my life was amazing every single moment during those high-income days. But I will say, it came pretty close to being as good as I thought it would be. And to lose it makes you question whether you would have been better off never having it in the first place. I struggle with this a lot. I got to do so many things and make so many memories that I never would have been able to do had I not hit that income level. But at the same time, I am somewhat haunted by them. Every time I drive by that beautiful downtown apartment building making barely-above minimum wage driving Uber/Lyft (and answering the question “is this your full-time job” or “what do you do besides this” for the thousandth time) I get depressed. All the flaws in my current living space that I once ignored are now amplified. Sometimes I feel the only times I am happy at all are when I lose myself for a few minutes and go back and look at pictures of those times, and pretend for a bit that I’m still there
So that, in my experience, is what it’s like to go from being wealthy to being poor
Movie stars dancing to…’I’m So Excited!’
This is the MUST WATCH movie of today’s post…
Have a wonderful day!
Vladimir #Putin is spending the weekend in #Siberia. The President together with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu enjoys walking in the #taiga forest and riding an all-terrain vehicle. Also, Sergei Shoigu showed the President his workshop.”
![What High School taught me about Diversity. Here we look at idea of "diversity" from the point of view of what it was like in my High School years. For my High School was fully and intentionally diverse. And at that time, there were two techniques of grouping people. These techniques were by [1] merit, and [2] by random association. Or in other words; "diversity". Thus we can compare diversity against merit as the criteria used in a selection process.](https://metallicman.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/1-23-1024x235.gif)
