It all comes down to love or money in a harrowing custody battle over a little girl, set against the glossy backdrop of the magazine and advertising worlds in 1960s London.

A privileged girl from a privileged class, Eliza has a dazzling career in the magazine world of the 1960s. But when she falls deeply in love with Matt, an edgy working-class boy, she gives up her ritzy, fast-paced lifestyle to get married.

By the end of the decade, however, their marriage has suffered a harrowing breakdown, culminating in divorce and a dramatic courtroom custody battle over their little girl. Also at risk is Eliza’s gorgeous family home, a pawn in the game, which she can’t bear to give up.

True to form, Penny Vincenzi introduces a devious cast of characters seemingly plucked from the pages of sixties- and seventies-era magazines, as she deftly maneuvers between the glamorous, moneyed worlds of fashion and advertising, and a heart-wrenching custody battle going on in the courtroom where the social mores of the time are on full display.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Penny Vincenzi

PENNY VINCENZI is the international bestselling author of fourteen novels, including Sheer Abandon, An Absolute Scandal, The Best of Times, and the highly successful Lytton family trilogy. Before becoming a full-time novelist, she worked as a journalist for Vogue, Tattler, and Cosmopolitan, among other publications. She was also the first fashion editor at Nova, a seminal woman’s magazine of the 1960s, known as Britain’s “style bible.” Penny has four daughters and divides her time between London and South Wales.

Editorial Review

Vincenzi’s latest investigation of British class unrest (Another Woman, 2012, etc.) begins with a country house. Entailed by a family trust, Summercourt cannot be sold by its owners, impoverished aristocrats Sarah and Adrian Fullerton-Clark. Son and heir Charles, a fledgling stockbroker, is in no position to help financially. With no repair budget, Summercourt is sliding into ruin. Sarah and Adrian pin their hopes on daughter Eliza’s marriage prospects—Jeremy, an ad exec worth a fortune, is smitten with her. Eliza, editor of a trendy style mag, finds her job all-absorbing as London fashion captivates the world, and bland Jeremy bores her. But she experiences immediate sexual frisson with Charles’ former army buddy Matt, a self-starting real-estate entrepreneur. An unplanned pregnancy forces the issue and the two are wed, much to Sarah’s chagrin over the groom’s working-class antecedents. Matt’s sister Scarlett, an airline hostess, has her own romantic troubles. Her lover, a married American, David, claims he’s about to divorce, but now his wife, Gaby, is pregnant. Scarlett, outraged because she had to abort her child by David, blackmails him into giving her seed money to start a travel business. While in Greece scouting a small hotel, she meets Mark Frost, a painfully shy travel writer with very appealing grey eyes. Eliza is chafing at the restrictions imposed on her by marriage and motherhood—Matt insists that she give up her job just as Twiggy and Carnaby Street are revolutionizing everything. Charles’ marriage to middle class upstart Juliet has proven disastrous—she’s spending all the money she erroneously (based on Summercourt) married him for, and he’s reduced to borrowing from her father. A few more developments, and the stage is set for the tamped-down hysteria that Vincenzi finesses so well. – Kirkus Reviews

Penny Vincenzi: ‘More Than You Know’

The Washington Post Book Review – April 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

Penny Vincenzi writes enormous, fast-paced novels with plots and subplots so deftly manipulated that it’s impossible to start reading one and still lead a productive life. “More Than You Know” is the latest threat to industry, and though not as potent as “An Absolute Scandal,” about the Lloyd’s Names disaster, it still wiped out three days of my life.

The story proper — or improper, as the case may be — begins in London, in the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace, and the year is 1958, the last time debutantes will be presented at court. Blue-blooded Eliza Fullerton-Clark is mid-curtsy before a pretty Elizabeth II when she resolves to lose her virginity. We are on the cusp of the social and cultural revolution known as the ’60s, and Eliza will be its avatar.

Savvy and egalitarian, young Eliza lops off the Fullerton barrel of her name and becomes a terrifically successful fashion editor for a glossy magazine. If this is somewhat infra dig from her parents’ point of view, it is forgivable compared with her choice of a husband. Throwing over a well-born suitor whose vast wealth was to have restored the Fullerton-Clarks’ crumbling pile in the country, she betrays her breeding by falling for Matt, a tough property developer sprung from the working class. He introduces Eliza to sexual ecstasy and impregnates her; the two marry and have a child. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

A lot has been written about cyber crime these days, may it be the hacking of the communication of large corporations by foreign governments, the raiding of hacker server facilities, stolen identities, and so on. One of the biggest crimes in the Internet world, however, has not been identified as such for a simple reason: It is legal to scam unemployed or low-income residents and make them believe they can start their own Internet-based business.

It is legal, because they don’t miss to post a disclaimer that states: “Everything we promise you is a crock of lies, and if you fall for our scheme, go and blame yourself.” Well, of course, they use more sophisticated legalese like “The examples as presented in our advertisement have been modified to enhance the understanding of the potential of operating an Internet-based business The results are not representative for all of our customers.”

Let me say it again in different words: The concept of having a website raking the money into your checking account while you sit at your swimming pool, drinking your vodka martini (shaken, not stirred) does not work. If it sounds too good to be true, it most certainly is!

Now to the next question: How about those who just need a little contribution to their monthly income or social security check? How about a $100 per month? Isn’t that possible?

Yes, it is possible, but in order to make a small business (and that’s what it is, a small business) successful, you need to invest blood, sweat, tears, and time. A lot of time. That way you make maybe $100 per month after two years. In the meantime you make less, and you still pay monthly fees to run your website.

Let’s do a reality check: Have a look at this very website FrogenYozurt.Com. I have been working on this website for about four years, and it contains more than 5,500 pages, and I get about 28,000 unique visitors per month. It was a lot of work. But guess what, I still have a daytime job. On top of that, I lose money every month, because my advertisement income does not match my operational costs. And, believe me, I have tried all kinds of advertisement possibilities, and even Google ads are not what they used to be.

To stay with the truth, I am actually not losing money (but I still have a daytime job), and here is the “trick” to make money online: You need a product line. In my case, I am selling literature, and I use my website to promote my books. I started about eight years ago by writing technical literature. I do have a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, and I put my special knowledge into these books. Over the years, I got in touch with writers all over the world who couldn’t find a publisher, and, more or less as a favor, I started publishing them. It will probable take another five to ten years before I can make this a full-time job.

And this is the lesson to be learned: There is no instant success when it comes to starting your own Internet business.

Of course, there are exceptions, for example, if you are the next Facebook-guy (Mark Zuckerberg), but, believe me, chances are slim. You have a chance for success if you are young and without the burden of a job and family, meaning you can spend all the time in a day. It helps if you have special skills, for instance, you can program video games. I have been there many years ago, but that was before the Internet/iPod/iPhone/iPad frenzy. I used to program a special Windows program that calculated electrical motors, and I made some good money then. But I also spend at least 12 hours per day, mostly more, to get there. These days, with a family, this is not possible anymore.

As I mentioned previously, in order to run an Internet business that actually produces income, you need a product or a service. On top of that, the product/service must be special, not mainstream, meaning you need to check out the competition. If there is too much competition, define where you are better than the competition (Pricing, uniqueness, etc.). If these parameters fail, look for something else.

In order to sell your product/service don’t count on the success of your own website. Creating a successful website is more work than running your own business. If you have a product, try to sell it through the big guys like Amazon (Google for Amazon Associate Program) or eBay (Check out their website for further information).

The next question, of course, is: How do I get a product line? And there will be no straight answer. Basically, you need to investigate your special skills or connections. Maybe, you know a business owner who needs an additional sales channel. Maybe, you have special crafting skills or you know somebody with special skills but lacks the marketing skills.

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For the past forty years western economies have splurged on debt. Now, as the reality dawns that many debts cannot be repaid, we find ourselves again in crisis. But the oncoming defaults have a time-worn place in our economic history. As with the crises in the 1930s and 1970s, governments will fall, currencies will lose their value, and new systems will emerge. Just as Britain set the terms of the international system in the nineteenth century, and America in the twentieth century, a new system will be set by today’s creditors in China and the Middle East. In the process, rich will be pitted against poor, young against old, public sector workers against taxpayers and one country against another.

In Paper Promises, Economist columnist Philip Coggan helps us to understand the origins of this mess and how it will affect the new global economy by explaining how our attitudes towards debt have changed throughout history, and how they may be about to change again.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Philip Coggan

Philip Coggan is the Buttonwood columnist of the Economist. Previously, he worked for the Financial Times for twenty years, most recently as investment editor. Among his books are The Money Machine, a guide to the city of London that is still in print in the UK after twenty-five years, and The Economist Guide to Hedge Funds.

Editorial Reviews

Financial Times
“Bold and confident … Coggan covers the terrain with characteristic calmness and objectivity, avoids over-simplification, and laces his arguments with his trademark erudition … The alphabet soup of acronyms, from SIVs to CDO Squareds, is blissfully lacking … Finally, the book is free from the shrieking ideology that afflicts virtually all contemporary debates over money. Indeed, it offers a clear explanation of the fresh ideological divisions that have arisen over how to deal with the crisis … the book should be taken very seriously.”

Publishers Weekly, October 31, 2011
“Coggan traces ‘history’s tug of war between monetary shortage and excess’ in this engaging and timely book about the current financial crisis…. Thoughtful and thorough.”

Kirkus, November 15, 2011
“Comprehensive…. A helpful analysis for anyone who wants to know how the world got into the present financial mess, which issues need to be addressed and what the consequences might be.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan
“This book stands way above anything written on the present economic crisis.”

Amid Debt Crisis, A Trail Of Broken ‘Promises’

NPR Book Review – February 7, 2012 (Excerpt)

Financial writer Philip Coggan traces the current global financial crisis to the 1970s, when the U.S. went off the gold standard.

“Up till then, every form of money had some link to precious metal: gold or silver,” Coggan, author of a new book, Paper Promises: Debt, Money and the New World Order, tells Morning Edition‘s Renee Montagne.

Coggan, who writes about finance for the Economist magazine, explains that before that time, the U.S. used gold to back the dollar; other countries could exchange their currency for American gold. But when President Nixon went off the gold standard, “essentially you had no limit on the amount of money that could be created and no limit on the amount of debt that could be created.”

The result, he says: asset bubbles.

Debt was used to buy assets, which rose in price and then burst. He points to Black Monday in 1987, when global financial markets crashed and the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 20 percent. Those same factors, he says, led to the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the more recent housing bubble. When bubbles burst, central banks stepped in and cut interest rates to keep the system afloat.

“The result of all that was that it was kind of a one-way bet for speculators: Keep borrowing money to keep buying assets; central banks will always bail you out,” Coggan says. “And that’s why we ended up in this mess that we are in … with lots of debts and central banks creating money to try and prop the whole system up.” [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

When other little girls were dreaming about becoming doctors or lawyers, Alex Garrett set her sights on conquering the high-powered world of Wall Street. And though she’s prepared to fight her way into an elitist boys’ club, or duck the occasional errant football, she quickly realizes she’s in over her head when she’s relegated to a kiddie-size folding chair with her new moniker—Girlie—inscribed in Wite-Out across the back.

No matter. She’s determined to make it in bond sales at Cromwell Pierce, one of the Street’s most esteemed brokerage firms. Keeping her eyes on the prize, the low Girlie on the totem pole will endure whatever comes her way—whether trekking to the Bronx for a $1,000 wheel of Parmesan cheese; discovering a secretary’s secret Friday night slumber/dance party in the conference room; fielding a constant barrage of “friendly” practical jokes; learning the ropes from Chick, her unpredictable, slightly scary, loyalty-demanding boss; babysitting a colleague while he consumes the contents of a vending machine on a $28,000 bet; or eluding the advances of a corporate stalker who’s also one of the firm’s biggest clients.

Ignoring her friends’ pleas to quit, Alex excels (while learning how to roll with the punches and laugh at herself) and soon advances from lowly analyst to slightly-less-lowly associate. Suddenly, she’s addressed by her real name, and the impenetrable boys’ club has transformed into forty older brothers and one possible boyfriend. Then the apocalypse hits, and Alex is forced to choose between sticking with Cromwell Pierce as it teeters on the brink of disaster or kicking off her Jimmy Choos and running for higher ground.

Fast-paced, funny, and thoroughly addictive, Bond Girl will leave you cheering for Alex: a feisty, ambitious woman with the spirit to stand up to the best (and worst) of the boys on the Street—and ultimately rise above them all.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Erin Duffy

Erin Duffy graduated from Georgetown University in 2000 with a B.A. in English and went on to spend more than a decade working in fixed-income sales on Wall Street. Bond Girl is her first novel.

Editorial Review

Inspired by her father’s long career in finance, Alex Garrett knew from an early age that she would end up working on the Street. So when top brokerage firm Cromwell Pierce recruits her right out of college, she feels a certain sense of destiny. Her optimism fades, naturally, when she arrives at the chaotic bond-trading floor to discover that she does not have a desk, just a folding chair. Her gruff boss Ed “Chick” Ciccone dubs her “Girlie” and makes it clear that she might be logging years as an indentured servant (aka analyst) for the team before the possibility of actually selling any bonds. Her duties include fetching coffees and lunches while trying to learn the super-complex workings of the finance business. The hours are grueling and the hazing never stops—at least until a new victim arrives. As punishment for showing up late one day, she is dispatched to the Bronx to procure meatball heroes and a 50-pound wheel of parmesan—and is stuck with the $1,200 lunch tab. Still, there is an absurd amount of money to be made, as she discovers when she is given a $110,000 bonus after her first full year with the company. Alex’s good looks also attract the attention of colleagues and clients alike, and she begins a clandestine relationship with office cutie Will Patrick, a seemingly nice guy who mysteriously goes missing every weekend. At the same time, married (and filthy rich) hedge-fund manager Rick Kieriakis takes a shine to her, peppering her with unwanted, stalker-like messages. His behavior crosses the line, but knowing that it is her word against his, Alex grits her teeth and tolerates him—to a point. Then the 2008 financial crisis arrives, throwing the whole industry into a tailspin and prompting Alex to choose between money and self-respect. Finance veteran Duffy’s topical fly-on-the-wall debut skirts the darker issues of Wall Street’s role in the world, but still makes for a compelling, fun read. – Kirkus Reviews

Book World: In ‘Bond Girl’ by Erin Duffy, a woman takes on high finance

The Washington Post Book Review – January 31, 2012 (Excerpt)

It’s about time chick lit made a move to occupy Wall Street, a slice of Manhattan real estate chock-a-block with men, money and more money. In her first novel, “Bond Girl,” Georgetown grad Erin Duffy deftly raises that tent. But don’t expect to arm pump your way through a take-down of Wall Street greed. If anything, Duffy — herself a veteran of the Street — is sympathetic to entry-level financial employees, who’ve endured public outrage since their high-flying bosses trashed the American economy. “Bond Girl” is invested in the genre of supposedly glamorous workplaces that are actually little slices of hell. Sort of “The Devil Trades Government Bonds.”

The novel revolves around recent University of Virginia grad Alex Garrett, a child of suburban Connecticut privilege who has always longed to follow her father’s footsteps to the Street. And she does, landing a job at prestigious Cromwell Pierce, where she is assigned to the 40-person government bond desk on the fixed-income trading floor. Unfortunately, being the new kid on this team is less like joining a profession and more like joining a fraternity, hazing included. And if you’re a woman, well, just that much more scope for hazing opportunities. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

Clark Howard is a media powerhouse and penny-pincher extraordinaire who knows a thing or two about money. A lifelong entrepreneur who is now the hugely popular host of a talk radio program and television show and the bestselling author of several books, Clark consistently delivers expert financial advice to his wide and devoted fan base.

Living Large in Lean Times is Clark’s ultimate guide to saving money, covering everything from cell phones to student loans, coupon websites to mortgages, investing to electric bills, and beyond. In his candid and friendly next-door-neighbor manner, Clark shares the small, manageable steps everyone can follow to build a path towards independence and wealth. Chock-full of more than 250 invaluable tips, the book outlines how to:

• Locate missing and unclaimed money in your name
• Lower your student loan payment
• Find legitimate work-at-home opportunities
• Get unlimited texting and e-mailing for less than $10 per month
• Know what personal info not to post to social media sites
• Determine the best mortgage rate, and much, much more

About Clark Howard

Clark Howard is a successful entrepreneur, a hugely popular talk radio host, HLN TV host, and founder of the website www.clarkhoward.com. He is the author of several books, including the bestselling Get Clark Smart.

Proud Penny Pincher’s Guide for Surviving the Tough Times

The New York Times Book Review – December 22, 2011 (Excerpt)

This time of year one’s thoughts turn toward family, friends, the best rum to decant into eggnog and — if you are like me, three years out of five — the vertiginous mountain of debt on your credit cards, and the financial reckoning that is breathing into your nostrils, a bit like a wolf.

I’m not a reader of self-help books, unless cookbooks and old poetry anthologies count. But this time of year I often find myself lingering in the personal finance section of bookstores, hoping some painless and rain-making tip rubs off on me. Sometimes I’ll buy one of these crisp-looking money books, by Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey or some other brand name, and place it by my bedside, and then read something else.

This year the book that leapt into my uneager arms was “Clark Howard’s Living Large in Lean Times,” a tightwad manifesto that’s been lingering on the New York Times how-to best-seller list all fall. Mr. Howard is himself a brand name. He has a popular daily syndicated talk radio show, a weekly program on the HLN cable channel and is the author of several previous books. He sometimes refers to himself as “El Cheapo Man.”

His new book is at once gloomy and upbeat, like an Arcade Fire song. He believes the American economy is a full 5 to 10 years away from rebounding. He also believes that if you devote yourself to his admonitions — that is, to the tormenting details of “saving more, spending less, and avoiding getting ripped off” — you can get a handle on your wallet and maybe even your life. Perhaps, I thought, while annotating this document of the current recession, I can see to it that my Christmas tree will not be repossessed. [Read the full article...]

The Sabina Strong Series Continues – Vampire’s Trill

Lorelei Bell has created another unique and mesmerizing mystery masterwork that tops its prequel Vampire Ascending in drama, fast-paced action, love, passion, heartache, and devastation. New friends, new adventures, shocking revelations, and harrowing experiences make for riveting reading in this second installment of the Sabrina Strong Series. Sabrina learns more details – through Vasyl’s recounting of his human and vampire life – of what her role as a sibyl means and how the past and the future will come together. She finally learns what role Vasyl has played in his search for the next sibyl and why she is so tremendously important.

Vampire’s Trill is available at Amazon.Com – including the Kindle Version, Barnes & Noble – including the Nook Version, and any other good bookstores.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

The Sunday collection in every Catholic church throughout the world is as familiar a part of the Mass as the homily and even Communion. There is no doubt that historically the Catholic Church has been one of the great engines of charity in history. But once a dollar is dropped in that basket, where does it go? How are weekly cash contributions that can amount to tens of thousands of dollars accounted for? Where does the money go when a diocese sells a church property for tens of millions of dollars?

And what happens when hundreds of millions of dollars are turned over to officials at the highest ranks, no questions asked, for their discretionary use? The Roman Catholic Church is the largest organization in the world. The Vatican has never revealed its net worth, but the value of its works of art, great churches, property in Rome, and stocks held through its bank easily run into the tens of billions. Yet the Holy See as a sovereign state covers a mere 108 acres and has a small annual budget of about $280 million.

No major book has examined the church’s financial underpinnings and practices with such journalistic force. Today the church bears scrutiny by virtue of the vast amounts of money (nearly $2 billion in the United States alone) paid out to victims of clergy abuse. Amid mounting diocesan bankruptcies, bishops have been selling off whole pieces of the infrastructure—churches, schools, commercial properties—while the nephew of one of the Vatican’s most powerful cardinals engaged in a lucrative scheme to profiteer off the enormous downsizing of American church wealth.

Editorial Reviews

“Money dominates the third of Jason Berry’s important books about the Catholic Church. Render Unto Rome probes deeply into the culture of the church. To painful questions about money and sex, Berry finds, the response of the church is always the same – secrecy and silence.”– Thomas Powers

“The Catholic Church wants us to believe that it can reform itself from within. This book shows that it simply can’t. If you are an entrenched member of the hierarchy, you are not going to like this book. If you are a Catholic who believes that truth will lead to change – and that the Vatican needs to change, and change fast – Render unto Rome is your catechism.”– James Carville

“A captivating read, Render to Rome is an astounding revelation of the church’s financial system, and required reading for those who donate to the church or are interested in the ongoing effort to restore the credibility of the church and its hierarchy.”– Sister Joan Chittister, OSB

“Once again Jason Berry is ahead of the curve when it comes to writing about the Catholic Church. Nothing about this book is superficial. This is a prodigiously researched work that looks at the church with both breadth and depth, and it is fascinating.”– John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide and The Great Influenza

Review

Jason Berry, along with his colleague Gerald Renner (now deceased) will forever be remembered for the solid investigative journalism that revealed the truth about the sordid life of Fr. Maciel Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ so honored and beloved by the late John Paul II. Their book, appropriately titled Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II, was roundly ignored for years by the Vatican and the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith headed by Ratzinger. It demonstrated that letters and formal requests to be heard by victims of Maciel’s sexual abuse in seminaries he founded were ignored for years; it makes one weep and outraged at this man’s perfidy. Yet, Pope John Paul II was so enamored of Maciel’s fund raising prowess and of his all-obedient troops that he took him with him on plane rides to Latin America and ordained fifty-some of his priests in a massive public showing of support in St Peter’s square. Ratzinger once commented that it would not be “prudent” to go after Maciel since he had done so much good for the church. Try telling that to the twenty-some seminarians he abused AND the two common law wives he had on the side along with four children, all of whom (boys and one girl) he also abused sexually. Ratzinger as Pope Benedict finally got around to investigating Maciel and his Legion of Christ order which, among other strange and fascist practices, demanded a vow of not speaking badly of the “saintly founder” (that is, Maciel). Maciel was not only a great fund raiser and recruiter for the priesthood, he was also enamored of Pinochet and other right wing dictators.

Now Jason Berry continues his probings into the sordid facts about the Roman Catholic Church in our time. He moves from pedophile scandals to financial scandals in Render to Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church. The two scandals are by no means separate however if one considers how $3 billion of Catholic lay peoples’ hard-earned cash has gone into paying lawyers and victims of the pedophile story. Or if one traces the money flow, which Berry does, from parish to bishop and to what is often secret funds. Berry is himself a Roman Catholic; he is not trying to destroy the church but report on it. The hierarchy is destroying the church, not truth-telling reporters. Berry comments that the Vatican’s net worth “is invisible.” In its 2007 balance sheet it listed the value of St Peter’s Basilica and other historic buildings at 1 euro each ($1.47)!

The current Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Bertone, was a lowly canon lawyer picked from obscurity by Ratzinger to investigate the Maciel case; he swore all the victims to secrecy and ended up doing nothing about Maciel. For his loyalty he was named archbishop of Genoa, then Cardinal, and now Secretary of State. While he was ecclesial chief of Genoa he found the time and interest to endorse Maciel’s book (since proven to have been lifted 80% from a dead theologian’s book–add plagiarism to Maciel’s list of sins and crimes). Bertone endorsed it in the most effusive way by writing a celebratory preface to the Italian edition in 2003. To repeat, this same Bertone so enamored of Maciel is now secretary of state for Pope Benedict’s Vatican. It is amazing what loyalty will buy.

The previous secretary of state was a certain Cardinal Sadono–the same cardinal who interrupted the Easter Mass in St Peter’s Square in 2010 to declare that Ratzinger was being abused by “petty gossipers” who complained that he was not taking action about pedophie priests and bishops and cardinals who cover up for them. It was Sadano who put pressure on Ratzinger at the CDF not to act against Maciel in the first place. This same Sadono had worked in Chile under Pinochet’s dictatorship, ever obsequious to his fascist ways even though hundreds of priests, sisters and lay leaders were being tortured and murdered by Pinochet’s regime. He approved only those priests for bishop who supported Pinochet. He was the recipient of a special medal given him by Pinochet in 1988. And it was John Paul II (now destined to “sainthood”) who handpicked Sadono as secretary of state to manage the Curia and to offer “more hard line resistance” to communism. Berry makes a strong case that Sodano laundered money for his erstwhile nephew and his business partner Follieri who gave money to the Vatican and who is now in prison in New York for fourteen counts of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. After yielding his job as secretary of state to the great and loyal Bertone, Sadono became dean of the College of Cardinals just in time for the College to vote Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.

William Casey, the CIA director under Reagan was a right wing Catholic so enamored of Maciel that he and his wife gifted them with a seven figure donation–a plaque honors their bequest in the novitiate in Cheshire, Ct. Casey steered money to the Vatican to support Solidarity in Poland and apparently in return the Vatican went after Liberation Theology and base communities in South America. Casey also fed money to right-wing militias in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, the very militias that murdered five Jesuits and their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador and also Archbishop Romero. Other champions of Marcel included Jeb Bush and Cardinal Rode who was head of Religious Orders in the Vatican and who took vacations in Cancun at the expense of the Legion. Not surprisingly, righteous right-wing Catholic William Bennet, ever on American TV, was also a proud and loud admirer of Maciel.

Berry asks the question: “Why beatify a pope whose faith in Maciel and myopia on the abuse crisis left a trail of human carnage? The rush to spectacle cannot airbrush facts from history.” Spectacle is indeed what the present and past papacies love about Television. And the media loves to oblige (ABC hired one of Maciel’s Legion of Christ priests to offer commentary for the funeral of the last pope.)

So much for Rome, church headquarters. What about America? The bottom line is that the bishops in their respective dioceses are like medieval princes who rule practically unchecked when it comes to financial matters. Many dioceses have no way of keeping healthy books even if they wanted to keep them. Transparency is rare and often non-existent. Cardinal Law in Boston, for example, famous for his passing pedophile priests from parish to parish and for his promotion to run a fourth century basilica in Rome, took money earmarked for priestly retirements and used it to pay off pedophile claims without telling anyone. The result? The clergy retirement fund is over $104 million in the hole. Law did this secretly before the pedophile scandal broke in 2002. Law currently serves on the Commission in the Vatican that appoints bishops worldwide.

One of his handpicked bishops, Bishop Richard Lennon of Cleveland was famous in Boston where he oversaw “Reconfiguration,” i.e. the closing of parishes usually taking into account none of the objections and alternatives of parishoners who held sit ins and sleep ins in certain parishes targeted for closure there. On arriving in Cleveland, Lennon set out to close 53 parishes while more local people felt the number could be limited to fifteen. He did not make himself the most popular cleric in town. In fact, so unbeloved by his flock is Lennon that when he comes to a parish to conduct confirmation he wears a flak jacket (sic!) and is accompanied down the aisle by two policemen. Lennon’s plan had no in-put from urban planners, public officials, priests or nuns. It included shutting down eight churches officially designated as historical landmarks.

Berry traces the money trails in the Boston diocese, Cleveland, New Orleans and Los Angeles. A prime example is the most important and historic black parish in New Orleans, built in 1842, that Bishop Hughes (also from Boston and another Law protege) shut down . A near riot among the parishoners eventually got it reopened but the charismatic pastor was exiled to Texas. The point is made that an effort to raise money through appeals to significant black leaders would have done wonders to keep the place open. After all, this was post-Katrina. But the Bishop never tried an appeal like that.

Perhaps the most startling news to me on reading this book (other than the flack-jacketed Bishop) was to hear the facts about Cardinal Mahoney in Los Angeles. Mahoney, Berry points out, was even more duplicitous than Cardinal Law but he was more expert at holding off the legal attacks and his diocese was more flush with cash that he put into legal defense funds against victims of pedophilia. However, charity funds dried up almost entirely. Mahoney was a genius at manipulating the media. Perhaps one expects that of a bishop of Hollywood land. “Mahoney’s decisions in recycling perpetrators, and living among them, were more egregious than Bernard Law’s scandal. But the media-savvy Mahoney spent heavily on publicity and used his financial muscle to wage the legal fight…ratcheting up an overall final payout of $750 million. But Mahoney was not indicted.” (323)

Berry proposes a solution to the legal battles raging over priestly pedophilia offered by Patrick Schiltz, of the St Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. Why not set up a national tribunal of well-respected people who are completely independent of the church to arbitrated sexual claims against the church. “The most important benefit of this system is that it would let the church and the victim work together in a common cause–achieving a just and healing result–rather than put them against each other through several years of litigation,” Schiltz proposes. The idea was offered in 2003; so far the bishops have not come on… Read more ›

Review of ‘Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church’ by Jason Berry

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – August 18, 2011 (Excerpt)

What does a church do when faced with potentially having to pay billions of dollars in damages to victims of sexual abuse at the hands of its clergy? As Jason Berry documents so well in his compelling new book, “Render Unto Rome,” the Catholic Church’s initial response was to fight the charges.

Highly placed bishops and cardinals denied any knowledge of such abuse or claimed that proper procedures had been followed in sending known pedophiles from one parish to another, where they often committed the same vile acts. High-priced lawyers argued that even if such evils had taken place, the statute of limitations had passed and victims were not entitled to compensation. And perhaps worst of all, high-ranking church officials in the Vatican and the United States branded the accusers as liars.

Apologies were almost as hard to come by as restitution.

We know that ultimately such tactics failed miserably and that archdioceses across the country and around the world have either lost or settled lawsuits that might bankrupt a major corporation — over $700 million in damages in Los Angeles alone. [Read the full article...]

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Almost Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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Billions of dollars are missing from Iraqi banks, and journalist Luca Terracini will risk everything to discover where it is. His Iraqi-American background has made it easier for him to infiltrate the darkest corners of the war, but death of his beloved Nicola in a suicide bombing has made him reckless. He has nothing left to lose.

In pursuit of the money, he meets UN representative Daniela Garner, who seems to know more about the heist than anyone else. She’s a valuable asset in Baghdad where the possibility of an explosion lurks at every checkpoint. Luca’s investigation proves volatile as well, and as he gets closer to the missing money, his actions begin to reverberate around the world.

In London, Richard North, a top-tier international banker and the one person who might be able to explain where the money has gone, vanishes. The manhunt for him will get Luca evicted from Iraq, separated from Daniela, and possibly end both his investigation and his life.

As usual, it’s all about the money: who has it, who’s lost it, and who’s ultimately going to pay, as clandestine agents emerge from the shadows and powerful nations seek to control information and bury secrets, whatever the cost.

Editorial Reviews

“One of the best novels to come out of the chaos of Iraq; a penetrating peek through the fog of war, and a high-octane thriller.” (Nelson Demille )

“Fine and ambitious [with characters who are] wonderfully human–smart, determined, decent, and flawed. Thoroughly compelling.” (Booklist (starred review) )

“A high-voltage international thriller … terrific suspense set against an exotic backdrop, The Wreckage is easily one of the summer’s most unputdownable books.” (BookPage )

“I have seldom read a more chilling and suspenseful tale. Robotham makes you see the sand, smell the burning oil and feel the bullets flying past. Most thrillers are lucky to have one great character; Robotham has given us at least four. They sweat, bleed and cry with such raw emotion that you can barely catch your breath and the words on the page feel like a million needles beneath your clenched fingers. This is a writer who will give you a slice of the Middle East you will never see on CNN or Fox. Robotham is the real deal and we can only hope he will write faster.” (David Baldacci )

“A fast-paced, gritty story that raises disturbing real-world questions … will appeal to readers seeking summer fiction with depth.” (Library Journal )

“High-octane [and] complex … Robotham, a former investigative journalist, weaves current events and white-knuckle suspense with a practiced hand.” (Publishers Weekly )

Review

Robotham’s consistency makes him a sure bet, The Wreckage crossing continents from Iraq to London (and Washington) as a London scam-and-theft inspires a hunt for stolen goods that threaten some powerful and dangerous people. Richard North, a London-based financier is missing, currently suspected of embezzling millions. Holly Knight scampers from one robbery to another until stumbling across Good Samaritan Vincent Ruiz, her actions not sitting too well with the ex-detective. Meanwhile in Baghdad, journalist Luca Terracini has picked up the scent of corruption on a massive scale, intent on following the trail of unaccounted for billions under the umbrella of war in Iraq, aided in assembling the puzzle by Diana Garner, a genius at tracking the intricacies of accounting and fortunes hidden in numbered accounts.

Between London and Baghdad, Robotham fashions a compelling tale of power and greed, the recent bank crisis igniting both catastrophe and opportunity. The action shifts between the two countries, seemingly unrelated as Ruiz and Terracini follow convoluted clues that grow more threatening the closer each gets to identifying critical players. The action is fast-paced as two separate investigations become one, an appalling attempt to murder, defraud and disappear without a trace. The characters are multi-faceted, from the world-weary Ruiz and the driven Luca to the chronically suspicious Holly, who inadvertently throws a wrench into an international scheme with her choice of Richard North as a victim. Robotham displays his broad cultural experience as well as intricate knowledge of sophisticated financial practices that affect massive amounts of money in various countries: “Globalization in microcosm; profit as God.”

This is classic good guys vs. bad, but these scarred warriors are no slick James Bond types, rather flawed men trying to make a difference in a broken world. The female characters are fully-fleshed, holding their own in an environment dominated by powerful men. The result is both shocking and realistic, any margin of good tempered with the exigent circumstances of government and corporate self-interests: “Every side has men who kill for a cause. Some motives are easier to understand.” With this edgy thriller, Robotham is staking his claim as a major player, but without the sophisticated cynicism that sometimes defines this genre. Luan Gaines/2011.

A Thriller of Iraq and the Financial Crisis

The New York Times Book Review – July 8, 2011 (Excerpt)

On his Web site, the Australian novelist Michael Robotham is prominently identified as an “international crime writer,” but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll discover that he worked as a journalist on Fleet Street before turning to novel-writing in 2004. Since then, he’s written seven novels including his latest, “The Wreckage.” That’s seven books in seven years: writer’s block is one problem this guy doesn’t have.

“The Wreckage” turns out to be the kind of international crime thriller with short, punchy chapters that shift abruptly — suspensefully, even — from London to Baghdad to Washington and other locales, just like the movies. Robotham says in his acknowledgments that the book is “based on many real-life events and documents.” One such event is the disappearance, and presumed theft, of billions of dollars worth of cash that the Federal Reserve shipped to Iraq to help grease the country’s wheels in the initial aftermath of the allied invasion. This really did happen. The nonfiction version was told a few years ago by the celebrated investigative team of Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele in Vanity Fair.

Another event, though, was the financial crisis of 2008, which, until the book’s denouement, hums quietly in the background. “He’s listening to the radio,” Robotham writes of one of his characters, a retired detective in London. “Stories about Iraq and Afghanistan. A U.S. Senate hearing into Goldman Sachs. Accusations of reckless greed.”

“Here you can shoot the bad guys,” an American mercenary in Baghdad says in another early passage. “In America we give them corporate bonuses and promote them to Treasury secretary.”

I read “The Wreckage” on vacation, on a beach in Mexico — a good call on my part; it’s nothing if not a summer read. Sitting under a beach umbrella, I knocked it off in a couple of days. [Read the full article...]

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The Bleeding Hills

A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

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When it comes to investing in the stock market,  investors have plenty of options:

1.  They can do it themselves.  Trillions of dollars are invested this way.
(Of course, the only problem here is that most people have no idea how to analyze and choose individual stocks.  Well, not really the only problem.  Most investors have no idea how to construct a stock portfolio, most have no idea when to buy and sell, and most have no idea how much to invest in the first place.)

2.  They can give it to professionals to invest.  Trillions of dollars are invested this way.
(Unfortunately  most professionals actually underperform  the market averages over time.  In fact,it may be even harder to pick good professional managers than it is to pick good individual stocks.)

3.  They can invest in traditional index funds.  Trillions of dollars are also invested this way.(The problem is that investing this way is seriously flawed–and almost a guarantee of subpar investment returns over time.)

4.  They can read The Big Secret for the Small Investor and  do something else.  Not much is invested this way.  Yet…

Let top hedge fund manager, Columbia business school professor, former Fortune 500 chairman and New York Times bestselling author, Joel Greenblatt, take you on a journey that will reveal the Big Secret for both individual and professional investors.   Based on path-breaking new research, find out how anyone can beat the market, the index funds and the experts by following a new approach that relies on the principles of value investing, common sense and quantitative discipline.   Along the way, learn where “value” comes from, how markets work, and what really happens on Wall Street.  By journey’s end, small investors (and even not-so-small investors) will have found their way to some excellent new investment choices.

About the Author

JOEL GREENBLATT is the founder of Gotham Capital, an investment partnership that achieved 40 percent annualized returns for the twenty years after its founding in 1985. He is a professor on the adjunct faculty of Columbia Business School, a managing principal and co-CIO of Gotham Asset Management, the former chairman of the board of a Fortune 500 company, and the author of You Can Be a Stock Market Genius and The Little Book That Beats the Market. Greenblatt holds a BS and MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Review

This is a very good book for its intended audience. First, it is short and sweet. At about 156 pages it may seem not so short, but the book is quite small in size, and it probably amounts to, say, 100 normal sized pages. Second, author Joel Greenblatt doesn’t simply present his suggested approach for small investors. Rather, he first takes the reader through many of the common investing alternatives that ultimately prove to be too hard, too confusing or just too simplistic for small investors to successfully implement. There’s a lot of value in knowing the limits of common investing approaches.

Interestingly, this is not Greenblatt’s first book on investing. He has already written “You Can Be a Stock Market Genius,” which he now says assumed too much specialized knowledge on the part of readers. It also assumed that small investors have lots (and lots) of time to devote to their investments. Greenblatt claims the book helped a number of hedge fund managers, but they weren’t necessarily the target audience. His other book, “The Little Book That Beats the Market,” was (and still is) good advice, he maintains, but again most people don’t want to do all the necessary work themselves. So, “The Big Secret for the Small Investor” represents his third attempt. Is the third time a charm? At a minimum, I’d say he’s much closer. Indeed, for many readers this will prove to be the right mixture of content and sensible advice.

Greenblatt basically groups the small investor’s options to four possibilities:

(1) Do it (invest) yourself. However, this is hard. Really hard, to judge from the collective experiences of millions of investors. Many people have little idea as to how to analyze companies and select individual stocks. Further, many do not know how to construct a stock portfolio or know when to buy and sell.

(2) Turn your investments over to a pro. The trouble is that most pros underperform the S&P 500 over the long run. Sure, there are some great pros, but finding them may prove to be at least as hard as successfully investing on your own. In my view, this is a very important point that Greenblatt makes. It’s just not as simple as finding the pro with the best track record for the last one, five or ten years. What worked in the past may not work so well in the future. This observation, by itself, could be worth the cost of the book for some investors.

(3) Invest in index funds. However, there are problems with index investing, and congratulations to Greenblatt for developing and explaining these problems in terms that most investors understand. As you read this book, you will come to appreciate the difference between market-weighted (“capitalization” weighted) funds, equally-weighted funds and “fundamentally-weighted” funds. The differences are not trivial, yet most investors are unaware of them.

(4) Use Greenblatt’s approach, developed and explained in this book. In fairness to the author, I should let his book speak for itself. However, I will say that his “value-weighted” approach, which amounts to giving more weight to investments that appear more attractively priced (lower price/earnings ratios, etc.), makes sense for many investors.

I have personally invested for many years, and as I look back on my own investing experience I could list many ideas that sounded good to me at the start, but proved to be too complex or too theoretical to work well in the real world. The beauty of this book is that you can save yourself a lot of time by reading Greenblatt’s assessments of the typical theoretical approaches and their limitations. For example, financial theory tells us that the value of a company is equal to the value of its future earnings, “discounted” back to today’s dollars. The theory is absolutely correct in many respects, but if you try it you’ll quickly find out that relatively minor differences in assumed future growth rates (or other variables) make for large differences in today’s “value.” So what good does that do? As far as traditional Benjamin Graham value analysis goes, the way to succeed is to first determine the value of a company and then to be sure to pay a lot less for it. The “lot less” amounts to Graham’s “margin of safety.” That’s fine for Warren Buffett, who is a master at assessing a company’s value. But how are most people going to accurately value a company? They’re not. Too many important estimates or guesses are involved.

Okay, this is getting long, so I will draw it to a close. This is an easy to read book that will appeal to (and help) many small investors. It helps identify those approaches that won’t work for most people (and in my view, that’s perhaps half of the value of the book), and it describes a realistic approach that most people can use. There are no guarantees in investing, of course, so your mileage may vary. At the end of the day, however, this is a worthwhile book for small investors to read. It’s well worth your consideration. – AdamSmythe, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Now Available As Paperback And Kindle Edition!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Following a lengthy prison term, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) finds himself on the outside looking in at a world he once commanded. Hoping to repair his relationship with his daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan), Gekko forges an alliance with her fiancé, Jake (Shia LaBeouf). But Winnie and Jake learn the hard way that Gekko is still a master manipulator who will stop at nothing to reclaim his rightful place at the top of Wall Street.

Editorial Review

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps has the compelling backdrop of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, features Michael Douglas returning to one of the defining roles of his career, stars two charismatic young actors (Shia LaBeouf, Transformers, and Carey Mulligan, An Education) and some wily old hands (Susan Sarandon, Frank Langella, and Eli Wallach)–so why is the movie such a dud? For one thing, director Oliver Stone doesn’t bother to genuinely explore what caused the stock-market crash of 2008; instead, the movie’s plot revolves around melodramatic backroom machinations and financial revenge, none of which has any real emotional heft. For another, Stone is possibly the most obvious director of all time. When the characters are talking about financial bubbles, the movie has shots of children in the park blowing bubbles; when the market crashes, the movie cuts to cascading dominoes–Stone beats every metaphor into submission, and if the audience feels bludgeoned at the same time, well, that’s just too bad. Add to that portentous dialogue like “He’s a monkey dancing on a razorblade,” incoherent references to sub-prime mortgages and other financial technobabble, and a woefully mismatched soundtrack by David Byrne and Brian Eno, and the result is muddled, sluggish, and confusing. It’s too bad; Douglas is as charmingly reptilian as ever. Also featuring a pointless cameo by Charlie Sheen, star of the original Wall Street. –Bret Fetzer

Review

I’ve worked on Wall Street my whole life. The first film was cut throat Ivan Boseky insider trading and raw greed at its finest. Michael Douglas was simply riveting. I had been waiting for the sequel ever since announced. Going opening day, I was stunned after watching it the first time. Yes, Oliver Stone nails the Collapse of Wall Street in 2008 with the mortgage meltdown. Every character can be parlayed into a real life individual involved in the Bear Stearns and Lehman collapse. But the real story is about second chances in life, fighting for family, doing the right thing, commitment to work and the price paid for loyalty. Shia Labeouf (Jake Moore) is at his best when he sets out on a course of vindictive revenge after James Brolin (Bretton James) causes the “perceived” collapse of Keller Zabel(KZI) and the suicide of his mentor and KZI’s leader Lou Zabel.
Michael Douglas (Gordon Gekko) and Shia Labeouf team up given that Jake is engaged to Gordon’s daughter Winnie. They embark on path to understand KZI’s collapse and to seek revenge, plus make a few dollars along the way for Gordon. Gordon and Jake make a series of “trades” to learn that Bretton James and his firm, Churchill Schwartz, were illegally betting on everything under the Sun to destroy KZI. Oliver Stone’s attention to detail is STUNNING. Words won’t do justice to the perfection of the each set. You have to know Wall Street to know that on a scale of 1 to 100, he gets a 99 because no one gets a 100. Gordon’s real redemption is his name, reputation and a deep love for his family. Jake simply wants to do right by the death of Lou Zabel and persecute those respondsible. Wrap those emotions around a fast paced collapse of Wall Street, and you have a beautiful movie. Vetrans of investing will be amazed, but the film has a broad reach. One can’t spoil the detail in the screen writer’s brillance, but the lines are wit personified. To be “blamed for all disasters since Nintendo” speaks to taunt tone and wit. Best line of all is Gordon’s—”When you stop telling lies about me, I’ll stop telling the truth about you.” Gordon finally does do right. One shouldn’t spoil this film. I titled my review “Love, Life Family….” The last 20 minutes bring together all aspects of any excellent drama. On a personal note given Michael Douglas’ condition, I will remember his 2 performances in Wall Stret with deep gratitude and always wish him good health. “Time is the most important thing in life.” Well said Mr. Douglas. – T. Lord, Amazon Review

Investors, shell-shocked by the “Great Recession” of 2008-2009, are looking for answers, for something fresher than the old ‘buy-and-hold’ mantra. They hunger for stability, yet yearn for growth to rejuvenate their battered portfolios.

Ray Lucia’s The Buckets of Money Retirement Solution: The Ultimate Guide to Income for Life provides just that—a reassuring and scientifically proven strategy that gives investors both growth and income.

Lucia, a Certified Financial Planner who’s helped thousands of people invest more than $2 billion, explains how to spend down ‘safe’ buckets (containing, for example, Treasuries, CDs, bonds), while leaving a riskier bucket (real estate, stocks and alternative investments) to grow long-term. This strategy shields investors from the short-term ups and downs of the market. And it gives them the courage and discipline to stay invested no matter what the future holds.

Written in a breezy, accessible style and loaded with tons of examples and clear, specific calculations, the book explains how to set your financial goals, divvy up your money accordingly, and then invest intelligently. With this book as your guide, readers will learn how to achieve both income and growth while at the same time reducing risk. “All in all,” Lucia writes, “this plan is akin to a sports car that seats six, approximating the best of both worlds. In this case by being a conservative strategy that’s also growth-oriented.”

Almost every kind of investment—stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate—plunged in the past year or two, turning off millions of investors who’d been planning for and counting on a reasonably comfortable retirement. These retirees or near-retirees need solutions…something fresher than the old ‘buy-and-hold’ mantra. Yet here’s what they hear from the financial-services industry: Set up an asset-allocation model, then take a systematic withdrawal to support your retirement…remembering, of course, to rebalance the accounts to remain in sync with the model. Wrong! That maximizes the advisors’ fees but doesn’t protect the investors’ assets during the tough times.

Amazon Exclusive: Q&A with Author Ray Lucia

Can you describe the Buckets of Money Asset Allocation Strategy?
Ray Lucia: Sure. I created Buckets of Money many years ago and it’s designed for retirees and pre-retirees. The asset-allocation component of it is a concept that I call “matching assets to liability.” Let’s see if I can make that clear. If you need to eat tomorrow, that’s a short-term liability. Therefore, you need to fund that liability with a short-term asset. But, you’re also going to need to eat twenty years from now. You fund that liability with a long-term asset. Short-term bucket. Long-term bucket. It’s all about matching assets to liabilities.

What are some sensible financial goals for someone who is about to retire?
Ray Lucia: Well, the biggest thing today is to have realistic expectations. If you think you’re going to earn 10 or 12% on the stock market and double your money every five or seven years, you might be fooling yourself. So, make sure you have a realistic expectation. Take into consideration when you will retire, when you’ll take social security, and what taxes you might be paying at that time. In the book, Buckets of Money Retirement Solution, I cover each and every one of those topics in great detail.

What are some basic tips for asset allocation and diversification?
Ray Lucia: Never do what I call “reverse-dollar cost averaging.” You’ve all seen the pie chart, and they all look nice and pretty. What individuals do, for the most part, is put their money in this pie chart, and then when it comes to retirement, they do “systematic withdrawals.” That’s a mistake. In Buckets of Money, we systematically withdraw from a safe money bucket, and we don’t reverse-dollar cost average out of the more volatile buckets. This method is covered quite extensively in the book.

The economy is always changing. What are some ways to protect a nest egg in the event of a catastrophe?
Ray Lucia: Right now, you have deflation and inflation working against you. No one knows if we’re going to have one or the other. That’s why you need to have a Buckets of Money strategy: a strategy that locks in long-term interest rates like guaranteed income for life, but is also sensitive to inflation down the road if in fact we have a bond bubble, if in fact we need to have something that grows over a long time period: assets like real estate, stocks and commodities. You really need a bar bell. You need something on the deflationary side and something on the inflationary side to protect you from either one or both.

What are some of the risks to avoid if someone is either already retired, or about to retire?
Ray Lucia: One of the greatest risks is watching too much television and reading into the radio talk shows too much. Most of the people that are pitching you stuff, whether it’s in books or tapes, or late-night infomercials, are really just trying to sell you something. We need to focus on strategy first: on managing taxes and then managing fees. If you do that with a Buckets of Money Retirement Solution, you shouldn’t have to worry about your retirement—ever.

Filling Buckets, Avoiding Debt

New York Times – October 9, 2010 (Excerpt)

THE financial planner Raymond J. Lucia boasts in “The Buckets of Money Retirement Solution” (Wiley, $24.95) that he has helped “thousands of people invest more than $2 billion” by showing them how to use the method of the book’s title.

And there is no doubt that he has an intriguing premise. Mr. Lucia has seemingly combined two well-accepted and related concepts when it comes to retirement planning.

Idea 1: You want to shift a significant portion of your savings into progressively more conservative investments as the date of your retirement draws nigh.

Idea 2: You should have seven years of retirement expenses in liquid investments at all times, so that you don’t have to worry about market gyrations over the short and intermediate term.

To accomplish both, the book says, you should put your money into three separate buckets. Bucket No. 1, which he calls “income,” is the money that you’ll need for the short term in retirement. (Five to seven years is the time frame he’s talking about.) That money should be in ultraconservative investments. [Read the full article...]

Click to enlarge...

“Have you ever heard of “Penny Auctions”? If you haven’t, but you’re the type always looking for bargains and amazing deals, then you’re in luck! Penny auctions are a new auction model that are rapidly becoming very popular in the US and Europe. Penny auctions allow individuals to do just what it implies, win popular products for pennies on the dollar. Leading the way in this new auction model is QuiBids.com, an Oklahoma based company. QuiBids auctions off brand new popular products such as iPads, Macbooks, HDTVs, Digital Cameras, Gaming Consoles, and more for steep discounts of 75%, 80%, or even 85% off retail price.

Sounds too good to be true right? Surprisingly, it’s not. See, QuiBids isn’t run like your typical auction. Along with people snagging great deals at a fraction of the product’s cost is the fact that users pay to participate in these auctions. Each bid placed on QuiBids costs users $0.60. By collecting $0.60 for each bid placed, QuiBids is able to afford giving away products on the cheap such as Macbooks for $23.72 or Nikon Digital Cameras for $57.42.”

You may have found this Online ad on abcnews.com, msnbc.com, washingtonpost.com, or somewhere else, but don’t be fooled! ABC News, MSNBC, and others are not responsible for the ads they display, and they don’t add any value to the actual advertisement.

Just a fair warning: The so-called “Penny Auction” may be another scam!

If you found this Online ad, do yourself a favor and be extremely cautious. DO NOT, by any means, submit your credit card information, and if you already did it, CANCEL YOUR CREDIT CARD! If these guys are what I suspect they are, they will suck you dry!

A few hints:

• The so-called reporter Julie is definitely a fake. The photo of the young woman shown on the website appears on many known scam websites.
• The so-called “Consumer Tips Digest” logo is a fake.
• The website structure is identical to many known scam websites.
• The YouTube videos, including the “News 9″ logo, are fake. They are being mass-produced for a number of scam websites.
• A company like Apple would never allow any retailer to sell their products for 75+% off retail price.

Still not convinced? Read my post on http://www.frogenyozurt.com/my-articles/making-money-from-home/.

Read the comments from readers of my website on the bottom of this page: The Scam: Work At Home Mom Makes $6,397/Month Part-Time.

Remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it most probably is!

Advertisement

Vampire Ascending

by Lorelei Bell Sabrina Strong is a Touch Clairvoyant who knows a secret. She knows her mother was turned into a vampire when Sabrina was ten. Now that she is grown up, a powerful magnate in the Chicago business world hires her to reveal the identity of who relentlessly murders vampires in his ultra-modern stronghold of a hotel. [Read More...] – Including an excerpt of the first chapter.

Vampire Ascending is now available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Julia

“America had to tackle the drastic economic downturn affecting the sustainability of the country. The major worry was the Huge Debt that gave rise to a great number of bankruptcy cases and taking the situation from bad to worse. In order to find a solution to this financial debacle, new regulations were introduced to which creditors have had to resort to relieving people’s debt.

This plan to reduce debt can be seen as an attractive effort to relieve Americans from theirdebt burden. The new regulations made available has led to feasible debt reduction options.

By simply filling out a short qualification form (below), Americans are able to tap into this life-saving assistance. You just have to initiate the process yourself.

We began our investigation when we received a letter from a Linda Jenkins, a single mother of 2 young girls in Dallas, Texas. After a devastating loss left her jobless and alone, Linda found herself facing the real threat of losing her home and not being able to feed her children.

I read Linda’s story last month and decided to feature her story in our local finance report. In our correspondence she told me about her remarkable journey.”

You may have found this Online ad on abcnews.com, msnbc.com, washingtonpost.com, or somewhere else, but don’t be fooled! ABC News, MSNBC, and others are not responsible for the ads they display, and they don’t add any value to the actual advertisement.

Just a fair warning: The so-called “Consumer Debt Plan” may be another scam!

Click to enlarge...

If you found this Online ad, do yourself a favor and be extremely cautious. DO NOT, by any means, submit your credit card information, and if you already did it, CANCEL YOUR CREDIT CARD! If these guys are what I suspect they are, they will suck you dry!

A few hints:

• The so-called reporter Julia is definitely a fake. The photo of the young woman shown above appears on many know scam websites.
• The so-called “News 6″ logo is a fake. The two people on top are also used to resemble Jennifer Theuriau and James Field, top news anchors of CNNews, yet another fake. See my post http://www.frogenyozurt.com/2010/05/cnnews-supports-online-work-at-home-program-scam/.
• The website structure is identical to many known scam websites.
• The hyperlinks on the “News 6″ website don’t work.

Still not convinced? Read my post on http://www.frogenyozurt.com/my-articles/making-money-from-home/.

Read the comments from readers of my website on the bottom of this page: The Scam: Work At Home Mom Makes $6,397/Month Part-Time.

Remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it most probably is!

Advertisement

The Bleeding Hills

A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

As I wrote, the only way to create sufficient income, may it be as a full-time business or only as an additional income, is through selling a product. That product could be, for instance, something you create yourself, maybe a certain craft you are good at. Such products could be handmade jewelry, art, pottery, dolls, woodwork, sewing, and much more. And you don’t even need to maintain your own website to sell your product.

etsy.com, for example, enables people to make a living making things and connect makers with buyers. As member you have your own online store to showcase your items. It is free to become a member, but there is a fee of $0.20 for each listed item. When the item sells Etsy takes a 3.5% commission. There is no limit to how much you can charge and what you can earn.

Another resource for selling your product online is JewelryWonder.com. Sellers must have at least thirty items to open a free account. There is no charge such as setup fee, monthly or transaction fees, or listing and hosting fees.

ArtFire.com is an artisan marketplace home to artists from around the globe. The community celebrates and supports art and creativity in all forms. Sellers can choose either a free basic account or a professional account for $15.95 a month. They also provide you the means to sell items directly through your own website.

Click Image to Enlarge

The scam continues, and Kelly Richards has undergone a miraculous transformation into a new personality: Michelle Richardson!

Let’s quote:
“Michelle Richardson is your average American. Recently married, she lost her job as a secretary a few months back. Instead of hunting for jobs and going back to corporate environment, she chose to take matters into her own hands. Michelle is one of many Americans working from home seeking out new business opportunities from the internet. Read his story in our feature article to the left.”

(Note: The his typo above is not mine; it is taken 1:1 from the scammer’s website.)

The scheme is the same: Michelle’s story is posted on fake websites, this time on usdreamjobs.com instead of Online6News.com or similar domains. Instead of Google Profit Library they are now promoting the “WEB PROFIT CLUB.” (Maybe Google took some legal actions to protect their name.) The design and the photo’s of Michelle, formerly known as Kelly, are exactly the same. The article’s wording has been changed a bit, but the basic message is the same: “Everyday people like you to earn cash from home based jobs. Just last week, over $10,000,000 was paid out to people like you.” (Note the atypical reporting style – No professional reporter would write like this.)

Not surprising, Michelle lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts, my home town, but you can bet, she also has homes in virtually every town all over the United States of America. That’s part of the scam.

For those who are still not convinced let me give you a quick rundown on how the scam works: You, the future incredibly-rich person, sign up at their website – See next screen shot.

Click Image to Enlarge

They’ll ask you about the desired monthly income (I chose $10,000) and the daily hours you would like to work (I chose 5 hours – Is that too much?). I entered my zip code and pretended to be born in 1970 (I wish…). The online program runs through a calculation process to determine whether or not your requirements are feasible, and, no surprise here, they are!

Next step: Entering name and address information, phone and e-mail. I chose Forrest Gump, living in Springfield, Hawaii, 123 Elm Street. I entered a random zip code, phone number, and fake e-mail address (Believe me, the last thing they’re interested in is your personal information; they want your credit card information!).

Yet again, the online program goes through another calculation (Really, you can see the progress bar moving quickly from left to right). Surprisingly, the program does not recognize that the zip code I entered in the first run does not match with the second one (Again, they’re not interested in where you live).

Click Image to Enlarge

Well, here we go. Please pay only $1.97 – Even if it’s a scam you lose only $1.97… Right?

Think again, and have a look at the bottom of the screen: “Sign me up for a subscription to Web Profit Club, and bill me $69.99 every 30 days until I cancel. By acting today, I will get my first 7 days for just $1.97. I agree to theTerms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. I may cancel any time by calling 1-877-669-2970, or by emailing support@webprofitclub.com.”

The way it worked in the previous scheme (the one with the original Kelly Richards), people who fell for the scam had a hard time canceling the service, because nobody picked up the phone when they tried to call.

Interview with Michelle Richardson

Greenfield, MA – When Michelle Richardson filled out a simple online form, working online was the perfect way to get a new job. From Michelle Richardson’s personal website: “On average I make around $5,000 to $7,000 a month from a kit I found online. Not a ton of money. But, my earnings are very solid, and consistent month after month. I was able to replace my previous job’s income in less than one month. Now I’m working about 8-10 hours a week on my computer at home, the coffee shop or anywhere that has internet. My life has never been better!”

Michelle was not alone. Many americans have recently been laid off. From her personal site: “I was not interested in some fly by night get rich quick business opportunity, pyramid scheme or anything to do with network marketing. You know the ones that want you to try to sell stuff to your friends and family members. I just wanted a legitimate honest way for me to earn extra income from home. I am here to spread this word. Hopefully my story can inspire you to try what I discovered.”

She realized that after the first three days, posting links on the internet was easy. “I never realized how this worked, otherwise I’d have started this years ago,” she says. It turns out that most of the links you click on while surfing is making someone, somewhere, money.

Search Engines have been making people rich overnight. These great things have been helping people to work from home and give them new jobs. From Michelle Richardson’s own words: “Now, I have seen scams out on the Internet that talk about making $50,000 a month online. But that is exactly what they are – scams. This is my story of my real life where I am now generating a legitimate income from home that easily replaced my previous job’s income. It’s not a lot of money, but I earn $5000 to $7000 a month from home.”

In a short time Michelle Richardson was able to make it with an easy system to post links online that saved her financially. She was able to share her story with us, which we’re finally revealing to the public for the first time:

Q: Michelle thanks for speaking with us today. What made you search for an online job?

A: Hi, thanks for interviewing me. I am excited to give something back to the people. I know its tough out there, and it’s really hard to find a job. So that’s why I’m doing this interview. I wanted to let other people know there is hope, and that you really can make a living working online.

Q: Did you ever work online before? I’m kind of skeptical that it’s really as easy as you say it is.

A: I’ve had a home computer for about 5 years. I was one of the last people I knew to get one. (Laughs). So it really is pretty easy. I would say if you have basic typing skills, and you can send an email, then you can get your links posted on Search Engines.

Q: How long did it take for you to start earning money?

A: It was really simple, and they laid everything out in front of me. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme, you do have to do some reading. Then the second day, I started posting links. I made my first money within about 4 hours.

Q: OK, Great. I bet a lot of our readers want to make the same money as you do. How do they get started? What is the key to your success?

A: Again, it’s really easy to do. People think I’m crazy for sharing this information. Let’s just there’s enough money and traffic for everyone to make a decent living. Just follow these steps:

Advertisement

Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Now Available As Paperback And Kindle Edition!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

I published my first novel, The Bleeding Hills in September of 2009, and currently I am working on my next book, American Male Prostitute. In fact, I have started two further novels at the same time, and they are on the back burner. I don’t lack ideas for books, and writer’s block, in the common sense, doesn’t exist in my world.

My version of writer’s block comes in form of not having worked on my second novel for several weeks. I spent some useless time on writers’ forums, and even tried to make some money through my blog. To put the result up-front, forums are a terrible waste of time, and I made $15 in two weeks by writing one lousy article on my blog. On the other hand, my novel American Male Prostitute is about making a career as a writer, and I will take the liberty of adding my experiences to the story of the main character, Stuart Berry.

Also, what I learned out of these few weeks is to stay put and concentrate merely on my own writing.

The Dream World Of Writers’ Forums

Many of us aspiring writers sign up for Online forums, either to pitch new ideas and wait for feedback, or to ask for advice, but foremost to “build a platform.” “Building a platform” is based on a very basic principle: If nobody knows you, nobody will buy your books.

I always put the term “building a platform” in quotation marks, because, in my very personal opinion, there is a lot of nonsense connected with the idea, especially when it comes to forums. Yes, it is imperative for each new – and even the established – author to maintain a web site and create some attention for his/her work. But forums, with very few exceptions, have close to Absolute Null impact on a writer’s career. Nobody else but other aspiring writers will read your entries. After months of playing with various forums I have decided to cancel all but one of my accounts – I’ll keep the one at AuthorNation.com, because it’s actually fun being there.

But even on AuthorNation.com you will be contacted by what I call the “forum sharks.” Forum sharks “attack” each single new member and ask to be their Online friend, forcing them to read their – usually useless – blabbering about their books and other writings, may it be infertility treatment, new paths to riches, or even poems that don’t rhyme (Sorry, maybe I am just plain old-fashioned, but, in my world, good poetry rhymes). You recognize the sharks by the vast number of “friends” they have, a number close to the total number of members on the forum. Their initial message is usually like “Welcome to the forum, and, by the way, please buy my newest novel…” They literally spend several hours a day to send their “friend requests.”

Then there are the semi-Gods, members who either have participated for several years (and at the same time wasted their time writing literally thousands of entries), or even accomplished to have their books listed on Amazon.com. Those members usually assume an elevated state of mind, thus assuming they have received the God-given right to lecture the newcomers. I once dared to challenge the effectiveness of reviews for an author’s career, and one of the semi-Gods blasted me for even posting such a ridiculous question. The last line in his entry was “Cut the crap!” His claim to fame was the publication of a Karate-Kid-replica novel that sold decently well on Amazon.com. Sorry, but I didn’t come here to be insulted by somebody who can’t handle a slightly provocative inquiry.

My advice to the novice writer: First, browse the Internet for information. Secondly, don’t buy books on writing; they’re just plain useless. Most importantly, read, read, read, and… read. Read Online newspapers, read Hemingway, or even Sarah Palin (Yikes!), everything works. This will be time well spent, and, if managed properly, will cost very little money.

Then, after all, write, write, and… write. Write about everything that comes to mind, especially topics you are passionate about. Put these writings on a blog. Continuous reading and writing will improve your writing style.

If you are talented and persevere, you will find success eventually. As a logical consequence, if you are not talented, you will not find success. Online forums play no part in either scenario.

Creating Income Through Your Blog

Yes, you can create income through your blog or web site. Is it a path to riches? In 99.99% of the cases, most certainly not. The exception may occur when you handle this as a business venue with a hot-shot web designer, a team of professional blog writers, and an abundance of financial freedom at hand.

In my best times, when I still wrote technical literature,  I made in average $80 per month through Google ads placed on various of my web sites. As you can see on this very blog (frogenyozurt.com) I am now using the Amazon.com Affiliate Program, which pays more per click than Google, but you only earn money when the user actually buys something from Amazon. I will not go into more details on affiliate programs such Google AdSense, and the Amazon Affiliate Program and how to incorporate them into your blog. Just check out their respective web sites, or google/bing/yahoo them.

There are certain parameters to make a living from a blog, and I, personally, don’t have the means (i.e. the time) to establish these parameters. First, you need to have content, content, content. You need to be specific, and you need to create hundreds of pages to attract sufficient attention, meaning, if you do this on your own, you should spend several hours a day writing on your blog. You also need to spend several hours per day promoting your blog. All this is not impossible, only very time-consuming, and, still, the financial success may kick in only after several years of maintaining the blog this way. Again, all the information you need (i.e. how to create and promote your blog) is freely available on the Internet.

One lane that I tried just recently was writing paid articles on my blog. I applied at three Online services that pay for articles on your blog, and – not surprisingly – I was approved in all three cases. I write “not surprisingly,” because they are desperate, and I will elaborate a little later on this. First, let me explain the principle.

The business model for these Online services is to provide hyperlinks to their clients’ web sites. To explain it in a nut-shell, search engines love hyperlinks, and the ranking of your web site will improve with the number of hyperlinks pointing to your site. Any expert will explain to you that it is not that simple. Search engines’ algorithms have been developed over many years, and they are very complex. It’s not all about hyperlinks, but also quality of the hyperlinks, and, after all, content, content, content. Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a science.

Anyways, as I wrote, there are Online services that hire blog writers, either to create content on their web site (so-called content mills – you write about repairing a dish-washer and similar topics), or to post on the writer’s own blog. They pay roughly between $5 and $25 per post, and, theoretically you can make a living from that when you work 25 hours a day (you accomplish that by skipping your lunch hour). The harsh reality is that you will make less than minimum hourly wages. Add to this that there is no big market for these services. Most of them are probably one-man businesses, who maintain professional looking web sites, but are desperate to make a living themselves.

As I wrote before I applied at three services, was approved three times, and I made $15 in two weeks. The idea was to create more content for my blog, and even get paid for it, maybe just enough to cover the grocery bill.

I made the $15 writing about Online casinos, not something I would like to promote, but I kept a professional attitude about it and wrote about Online gambling while sticking to the facts. I received my payment promptly the day after I submitted the post to my blog, and I went to restaurant.com to buy a $25 gift certificate for $15. My wife, my son, and I had a good time at the “Greenfield Grille.” So far there were no further assignments, but I kept my account with this service, since they treated me well and professionally.

I received yet another topic from another service. Payment would have been $10. The assignment was just down my lane; it was about a business involved with environmental protection, promising to reduce your junk mail and plant a tree in your name. I was proud to have written a very nice two-paragraph article as requested and provided the hyperlinks exactly as requested. The article was promptly rejected, because I hadn’t placed keywords as requested – actually, I did, but only as a tag inside the HTML code, still visible to search engines. The request was to insert the name of the business owner and the business itself into the post, all in small letters, not separated by commas or any other formatting that would actually make sense.

Well, one of my short-comings is that I refuse to deal with idiocy, and I really didn’t care for the tone they used. I have written many articles in my life and most of them underwent some necessary changes, but all this was managed on a professional level. I was willing to play nice for a small payment, but don’t like to deal with such an unprofessional attitude. I promptly canceled my account with them.

The third service works on the premise of bids, meaning you as the author have a look at “blog opportunities” and you place a bid. The payment level was as lousy as the rest, but, again, if it helps to get more content for my blog, then why not? There were three “opportunities,” and I placed a bid on all of them. After waiting for two weeks without any response whatsoever, I changed my e-mail reference to cancel@myaccount.com. They didn’t have an option to cancel your account with them.

Please excuse that I don’t offer any names or web sites – I wouldn’t want to promote these services. I found them all through googling.

As I said, I learned my lesson, and I will stay put and concentrate merely on my writing.

Every website, promising easy income through running a website with Google ads, is a scam!

Go with the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

The harsh reality is, the time when you could make good money through Google ads is over! Still, there are a myriad of websites with slogans like “Work At Home Mom Makes $6,397/Month Part-Time.” If it was true at all, why isn’t everybody doing it? Because it’s a scam! The only ones to create a tremendous income are the scammers!

Well, to show just one example, here is an excerpt/copy of the “Massachusetts Job Report” by “Online 6 News” (Note: The Massachusetts Job Report as well as Online 6 News are a fake.) It’s the “Massachusetts” report, because that’s where I live. The scammers run programs that can determine from where you log in (They look at your IP address) and change the content accordingly.

Work At Home Mom Makes $6,397/Month Part-Time

Online News 6 Investigates Google Work at Home Programs…

Have You Ever Thought About Working Online?

Kelly Richards of Conway, MA never thought she would have a job working at home until one day she filled out a simple form online. Before she knew it, she discovered her secret to beating the recession, and being able to provide for her family while at home with her two children.

I read Kelly’s blog last month and decided to feature her story in our local job report. In our phone interview she she told me her amazing story. “I actually make about $5,000-$7,000 a month using Google. It is enough to comfortably replace my old jobs income, especially considering I only work about 10-15 hours a week from home.

Working with Google has been a financial windfall for Kelly, who struggled for months to find a decent job during the struggling economy. “I lost my job shortly after the recession hit, I needed reliable income, I was not interested in the “get rich quick” scams you see all over the internet. Those are all pyramid scams or stuff where you have to sell to your friends and family. I just needed a legitimate way to earn a living for me and my family. The best part of working online is that I am always home with the kids, I save a lot of money.”

I asked her about how she started her remarkable journey. “It was pretty easy, I filled out a short form and applied for a work at home kit. There is a small shipping and handling fee, its not really free but it was under $5. I got the Kit and within four weeks I was making over $5,000 a month. It’s really simple, I am not a computer whiz, but I can use the internet. I post links that are given to me, I don’t even have to sell anything and nobody has to buy anything. They are constantly recruiting people to post links, you should try it.”

Online giant Google, worth over 100 billion dollars is the most used search engine and internet market place. Google is the #1 internet site in the world, over 50 percent of all internet traffic flows through them everyday. It’s a great company and they have been helping people work at home for over 10 years. Why not get in with the internets best and biggest company? there are plenty of scams on the internet claiming you can make $50,000 a month, but that is exactly what they are scams. From my conversation with Kelly, “I am making a good salary from home, which is amazing, under a year ago I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank god every day that I filled out that form.”

Quickly, Kelly Richards was able to use the simple Google Profit Library kit with the Google Home Income kit to make it out of the recession.

Kelly had never shared her story before, and with her permission, we are putting it public.

Note: The grammatical errors/flaws are not mine. This was a simple copy and paste. Needless to say that a professional Online report would not be as flawed as this one. Also, to my knowledge, Google does not hire people to put hyperlinks on their blogs.

While these types of fraudulent jobs don’t really exist, there are plenty of jobs arising from online medical billing and coding courses.

How Can I Report Mass-Marketing Fraud?

If you have a complaint about any type of Internet crime, you can file an online complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). The IC3 is a joint project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). The IC3′s key functions for federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies will be (1) receiving online complaints, (2) analyzing them to identify particular schemes and general crime trends in Internet fraud, and (3) compiling and referring potential Internet fraud schemes to law enforcement. In addition to FBI and NW3C personnel, the IC3 will include agents and analysts detailed from other law enforcement agencies.

If you have a complaint about any type of consumer fraud, including any type of mass-marketing fraud, you can file a complaint through a toll-free Consumer Help Line, 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357) or online with the Federal Trade Commission

Source: U.S. Department of Justice - http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/internet/

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AMERICAN MALE PROSTITUTE
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss 

How I (Almost) Got A Book Deal Through Sex, Lies, And Deceit

Today’s publishing world is divided into two principle sections. First, there is the exclusive pool of traditional publishers, and, second, the help-yourself shark tank represented by the so-called vanity publishers.

Vanity publishers have a significant edge over traditional publishers in regards to brutality, business sense, and profitability. They ruthlessly pursue the infinite supply of aspiring writers who, in turn, are rejected by traditional publishers or literary agents. Ironically, in the world of traditional publishing, authors are rejected not necessarily due to lack of talent. Vanity publishers accept everybody and everything. No questions asked. Just pay your bill, but don’t come crying to them when you can’t sell a copy of your book.

The question remains, what does it take these days to get a book deal with a traditional publisher? What do you do when, hypothetically, you are running out of time and mere talent is not the be-all and end-all?

Stuart Martin Berry has found the answer: If you can’t impress them with your talent, baffle them with your bull-shit. [Read more, including an excerpt]

Reading the New York Times and The Washington Post, both Online, on a regular basis has become my regular morning habit. Recently I noticed that The Washington Post has found another clever way of increasing their revenues by offering local ads. When I logged on to The Washington Post this morning I found an ad embedded in an article, saying:

“Kelly Richards of Greenfield, MA never thought she would have a job working at home until one day she filled out a simple form online. Before she knew it, she discovered her secret to beating the recession, and being able to provide for her family while at home with her two children.” The ad was run by the Google Profit Library, and who wouldn’t trust a company like Google when they offer you a job? See also the “Massachusetts Job Report.” Just be aware – It’s a scam!

Well, I live in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and the ad, naturally, got my attention (Good for the Washington Post!). The ad was also of great interest for me, since I am in the business of maintaining a blog and trying to create some income through it. So, I did some research, because, these days more than ever, I don’t believe in a sure path to riches.

Surely enough, everything about the Google Profit Library is a scam. First of all, the Google Profit Library is NOT associated with the search engine  giant. It even goes so far that your credit card information is being passed to several other businesses, and they will charge you for services if you miss the cancellation deadline for services that come with the Google Profit Library.

For more information on the scam log on to http://needmoneyblog.blogspot.com.

The sad part is that The Washington Post is not in a position to verify and reject these scam artists. I wrote an e-mail to the Post’s VP of Sales & Advertising, but received no response so far. On the other hand I haven’t seen the ad again.

If you have any additional information on the Google Profit Library please leave a comment. I’d like to hear from you.

Last, but not least, if you want honest information on how to start a web site or blog and make money from it, check out my book, A No-Nonsense Guide to a Professional Blog (There is also a preview of the book). Honestly, I wrote it after learning about the so-called “Google Profit Library.” I deemed it was time to stop the nonsense. The book shows you step by step how to set up a professional blog with some advice on how to run it, and maybe even make some money from it. The difference is, you don’t pay me at all (I would appreciate that you buy the book, paperback or PDF), and the required investment of roughly $120…200 per year goes to your Internet service provider for running your web site. Also, check out myprofessionalblog.com. This is the web site I created to write the book, meaning I created the web site, made screen-shots and included them into the document.