Personal Planning

Every parent must teach their children to take care of themselves; stay healthy by eating nutritious meals on time, be security conscious, be productive, copy and guardedly protect their important documents and prioritize tasks needed to accomplish preset goals. Setting goals and listing the necessary tasks will drive decisions and avoid emergencies (unscheduled responsibilities). It is therefore these decisions (description of each task, activity and reference to other related tasks) that must be structured by category, by date and time and financial amount, in order of importance.

Financial Products

Everyone has criticized financial institutions for be too conservative or taking on to much risk. What one needs to understand is that a particular financial institution through their range of products is deliberately designed to be conservative or progressive high risk takers. Any financial crisis is therefore based first and foremost on miscommunication more than any clever misuse of funds and this is clearly a failure of regulators to protect the sector.

Business or Management

Loosely, the words business and management have been interchanged so often that any misuse is now accepted. “I have a business in town” could mean “I manage or I own a retail store in town”. Management is generally defined as using all available resources to achieve preset goals and objectives. This act of managing is normally carried out by a qualified team or individual employed to oversee day-to-day operations. But the decision to own or invest in the retail sector in that town and the decision to continue the same operation in the same location and the decision to exit or change any aspect of the operation, now, that is Business.

Taxing Money

Movement is afoot to implement a system of, what can be described as, new taxation on each financial transaction worldwide. This move, as a consequence of the global financial crisis, is primarily aimed to curb speculators and hedge funds activities but will also have a direct effect on productivity as longer term financial paper is expected to become more attractive. This tax rate across countries, not on internal country transactions, is basically to be managed by, the last reserve bank to all central banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as it increases the number of currencies it uses for its base currency calculation. Yes, a single currency for all international transactions.

Food from the Forest

After Copenhagen December 2009, the world is now seeing, understanding and accepting the scientific evidence of the effects of rapid climate change due to industrialization, with record snow fall across major cities in the northern hemisphere and unprecedented heat waves in the southern hemisphere. Nature is speaking and human beings must listen or die. It will not be the weather alone that kills; it will be the wars over basic food. To reduce global temperatures, it is well known that all forest must be protected and quickly replanted. To increase food supplies, investment in different production models is necessary. Many cultures have traditionally produce food within densely forested areas; these method are not widely studied and known, there require new studies, techniques and tools, a joint venture agreement with the native peoples, learning for our past mistakes to preserve the forest and slow climate change.

Social Investments

Every short to medium term plan must be a part of the long term objective. The plans formulated for today’s children, planning the family finances, or improving a nations’ education and healthcare systems, all require a long term vision. Without dreams there can be no future. The artisans’ vision communicated in writing, audio or visual is the key to social development and everyday new ideas are spawned, old ideas are refined and good ideas are funded, making the arts and culture the driving force behind the development of a civilization.

Information Portal

A business success is driven more by its lawyers and auditors, who prevent expensive penalties from lawsuits and from breaches in regulatory compliance, than by its core products. Hence, the focus of any type of business must be to bring together a development vision informed by economic intelligence and peoples (customers, suppliers, venders, employees, lenders and investors) needs and wants. For this reason, the today-to-today internal operations of the business must be closely monitored and the external environment will sway all decisions.

Money must Work

Everyone should know and understand money. Financial literacy teaches mostly personal and family budgeting but it is equally important to know and respect the other side of the economic equation. To provide and improve an acceptable standard of living, infrastructure (water, roads, housing, etc.) and opportunities (jobs), consumers must purchase from business, for business to grow and create more jobs and of course, paid taxes which builds and maintains schools, hospitals, etc. Money must circulate from salaries to business to Government and back to salaries.

Save the Children, Save the World

As political leaders discuss solutions to, reduce green house gases released into the atmosphere and maintain the forest cover, hence, slow or reverse climate change, there is an equally grave threat coming from our children. As populations increase depleting the shared natural resources, aggression grows from one generation to the next because there is less to go around, and the widening gap in lifestyles erodes hope, countries will not be able to stop or contain the resulting violence and riots will spread across the world. Morals will no longer be able to control the masses.

Failing Banks

The future is not that hard to see when it comes to the international banking sector. Traditional banks have long started to implement a transformation plan, driven by the advancements in information and communication technology, which has been accelerated by the worldwide recession. Now, Governments are pushing for more rigid regulations and prudent examinations to protect their populations.