Easter is an American quintessential family holiday. We started Ash Wednesday for the beginning of Lent. This is a quite important holiday for me as an American Jew. Not in a religious sense per se. Instead, it is the starting point of Spring Cleaning for the upcoming eight days of Passover. To celebrate the misery of no bread for a week, one has to clean their house up until there is not one crumb of anything leavened in their house.

But, both holidays have one thing in mind: bring family back into what is supposed to be the American family like we see on The Brady Bunch. While the American family values get rebuilt from its slow and painful death from the 1960′s, there is an even bigger slow and painful death since then: Shopping Malls. Just like the family values of today, the shopping mall is suffering a long, long death. the industry took the MRI examination and it was confirmed they have an incurable Online Shopping Disease (OSD).

Renowned hedge fund manager Bill Ackman helped  save mall real estate investment trust General Growth Properties (GGP) from bankruptcy in 2009 . He turned $60 million into $1.6 billion in those 5 years of crisis in real estate.  But, Bloomberg reported last week that Ackman sold his final 28 million shares back to GGP via a buyback for $556 million. It looks like Ackman is taking his money and running from mall real estate. A good example is his loss of hope on JCPenney’s, one of the many dying retail companies. Sears, Macy’s, Radio Shack, and Kmart are a few of the next followers of Border’s, Caldor, and Woolworth’s.

Online retailers are basically transforming the way we shop in all advanced countries today. Mall real estate owners can always raise funds and money in three ways:

1. Raise their rental rate
2. Loan costs go down reducing interest payments
3. Market value of real estate goes up

Shopping malls have risen to the peak of their capacity in all three ways. They would lose tenants or lose capital assets. When you are at the top of Mount Hood, there is only one way to go: STRAIGHT DOWN! The picture above was the Canton Center Mall in Canton, Ohio. It gives a vision of what 2020 would look like when Cyber Monday puts Black Friday out of business.

So, where do we put our hard earned savings for investing? There exist very few Walmart, Kohl’s, TJ Maxx, or Target stores in malls. These big four retailers have a long way to compete with the online shopping revolution. They all have been vaccinated from OSD because they do a lot of online shopping services. I still prefer shopping at your local small retailer in my neighborhood. Yet, the convenience of these four retailers is amazing because they ship the product free of charge to the store of my designation the next day. Your local store would be a wait of up to a week to order a product because their inventory operations is on a much smaller scale.

Retail is not dead. Instead, it is transforming to keep up with our fast paced life. Make sure your investing ideas are also transforming with the new wave of shopping services. When companies grow, so do your dividends every 3 months.

To Your Health…

To Your Wealth…

To Your Wisdom.

Washington DC politicians have planted a ticking bomb ready to implode the US economy one day. They are not a bunch of lawyers; they are all farmers. They have sowed the fields of economic destruction. Spring is coming in another 30 days. We shall see economic turmoil bloom with the crocuses and daffodils. Unlike the carrots and tomatoes grown in California, there will not be a sweet taste to the coming apocalypse from kicking the can down the road for the past 50 years. The Federal Reserve graph above can explain how much the US national debt went into 4th gear going 85 miles per hour. During the height of the Cold War in the 60′s and 70′s, our debt limits were very reasonable. Do not get me wrong; I am not anti-debt. Debt is good for raising funds for building new schools, expanding highways, and mass transit finances. Debt is like a one pound bag of M and M’s: you take a handful and they taste good; you take the whole bag and you get a stomach ache. The same going with printed excess money; it gives severe aches and pains. Look at how debt now dominates the entire world still today. The BIG FOUR economic powers (China, Japan, European Union, and US) of the world all are in downward spiral direction thanks to massive debt:

• The U.S. requires perpetual debt-ceiling hikes instead of balancing the budget

• The euro zone remains exposed to a banking system sinking like the Titanic on its own sovereign debt

• Japan is doing everything possible to have debt twice its national GDP

• China can no longer grow sufficiently without manipulating its debt overload

That’s just the big four. And we’ve seen recently how these threats can manifest themselves in emerging market turmoil. Turkish Lira and Argentina Peso are great examples of emerging market turmoils because of the BIG FOUR not handling their own economic troubles. If the intentions of DC is to weaken the emerging markets, then they are doing a great job. Wall Street Fat Wallets are always up for taking control of all economic powers in the rigged Wall Street investment industry. One does not need all this economic information that sounds Greek to the average person. In plain English, we just need to look at the national confidence of the population. Where do we go for such information. We go to Christmas shopping season. Almost every retailer was lacking profits behind Wall Street’s expectations. JCPenney’s and Macy’s were a shocker to many. Big name retailers are following Border’s and Nobody Beats The Wiz in becoming defunct retailers with lots of debt. If consumers in most OECD member countries have no confidence, then what does this tell your average American, Canadian, and European? Do you feel that we are succeeding our goals? Do you have the used car salesman smile even though we are shrinking our economies? The demand for physical, not paper, gold today really shows the strong beliefs that people really have in their economies and governments. What is the solution? Me personally, I am buying one ounce physical silver. I truly am a fanatic of Perth Mint Certificate Program. Unless you are an Aussie citizen, there is no other program for investing and storing physical precious metals. Many people say go and buy gold. This is great advice. Yet, I personally prefer investing in silver because:

• US Government had no confiscation on silver in 1933
• About $ 20 an ounce makes it easy for purchases while gold is $ 1,400 an ounce
• Recognizable by anyone and everyone
• Easy to invest and buy from any bullion dealer

It is up to you for preparations for the upcoming economic turmoil for 6 billion people one day. To Your Health… To Your Wealth… To Your Wisdom.

Source: AP

James and Ellen are going on vacation. They do not want to spend too much on a President’s Day Weekend. So, they look at going to a ski lodge in the Borscht Belt, a vacationing region of the Catskills in Sullivan County. It is just a short one hour drive north of New York City with picture perfect views of nature’s beauty. The Borscht Belt has served for many years as a vacationing hotspot. When Patrick Swayze made the classic movie Dirty Dancing, the Catskills was the place to go for vacationing.

A couple of decades later, The Borscht Belt is just a bunch of empty hotels today thanks to cheap airfare prices since the 1970′s. It is an unsuccessful part of New York State today. To bring back to 1960′s in the Catskills, New York Governor Cuomo has granted over 2,000 acres of land to build a casino, hotels, and an amusement park.  This is great for the Upstate New York economy. It will create jobs and bring tourism back to the Catskills. But, the owner of the land is the Chinese Government.  Chinese Government Granted US Federal Land

What is the Chinese Government doing with building China City north of New York City? Why did President Obama grant this land owned by the Interior Department to the Commies? There are a lot of questions on why President Obama is granted Communist China the right to own our land. The Bank of China sent a team to do a geological survey on the Catskills for natural gas depositories. According to the research done, there is up to $ 5 Trillion worth of deposits. This well more than enough to pay back our debts to China’s ownership of our national debt. Obama Sells Out America To Communist China

This is not the only example of Chinese “economic zones” on US soil. In Boise, Idaho, The Chinese Communist Party is full ownership of China National Machine Industry Corporation (Simomach for short). This is over 50 square miles of land. We already sent hundreds of thousands of jobs to China since the Berlin Wall collapsed. Twenty five years later, Communist China is on our shores and they are not leaving any time soon. China Builds 50 Square Mile Economic Zone In Boise

Everyday I hear people complaining about having no more jobs to pay their mortgage payments and monthly bills. The unemployment problems is not just unemployment problems. If you open your eyes, you will see that wages have shrunk ever since the 2008 Mortgage Crisis, never mind pensions were shrunk or gone. With these new economic zones being created by Communist China, we are in the right direction for living the same style of life as Third World countries. With the help of Communism, The USA will soon become the USSA. We have fought against Communism after WWII. Now we are being transformed into it and no one notices or even cares.

What will America look like in 2020?

Will you have a prosperous career still then?

When will be the next government-assisted economic catastrophe on hard-working Americans?

Only you can answer these questions to get an idea of your foreseeable future. Your comments are welcome and always sharing to open many eyes to the Communist States of America!

To Your Health… To Your Wealth… To Your Future

Janet enjoys walking through through Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo on a leisurely afternoon. It brings her such joy and connected back to nature, even though she lives in a metropolis. It brings a peace of mind and a few moments of relaxation and meditation to her overworked mind and body. But, this year in 2014 is not bringing relaxation to her mind as easily in smog infested Chicago. The pollution is highly increasing with higher acid rain levels. Janet speaks to a climatologist at University of Chicago and the professor explains that China’s excessive pollution traveled across the Pacific Ocean to heavily pollute California and its neighboring states. The climatologist explains that 24 % of the acid rain in the West Coast is tied to the huge pollution problem in China. The pollution keeps traveling East to smog infested Chicago.  US Gets Their Share Of China’s Pollution

Does anyone ever see people in Beijing wearing masks because of the heavy cloud of smog blocking the sky view of the city? It takes up to 6 days for the pollution to travel across the Pacific to California. I have never seen such pollution levels in 2006 when I was studying in Shanghai for my MBA. It is amazing how a city with twice the skyscrapers of New York City and subways faster than Superman can turn into the smog infested city.

Imagine living on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago in a $ 3 million apartment and getting a beautiful view of Lake Michigan with a three mile high cloud of smog. Would you pay so much money for a fancy view of poisonous smog? I did not think so neither. Pollution like this is not a price to pay for a 30 year track record of economic growth and expansion. In the long run, China is losing because they sacrifice their beautiful country for a few American dollars.  Pollution Cleanup Will Take Decades

So, how can I make the fortune off this pollution crisis? Well, you can make huge profits by the millions by purchasing platinum and palladium. What is so special about these unpopular shiny metals? The catalytic converters are made from these two precious metals. One can buy both on the future exchange. Yet, there tends to be a lot of risk in trading futures for most traders. The best way to invest would be in ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). There are many that do investing individually in each precious metal.

Instead of buying 2 ETFs, one can purchase Sprott Physical Platinum and Palladium Trust (Ticker: SPPP). SPPP Investment InfoThe risk is low because you are investing in a baskets of investments instead of buying stock in one company like GoldCorp. This is why ETFs are such a great option to invest in a whole industry or commodity.

After a business trip to Shanghai, Janet is sure to claim that polluted Chicago is one of the cleanest cities she has seen in years. How would you claim your local metropolis on cleanliness?

To Good Health… Good Wealth… Good Wisdom.

Happy Investing

You comments and questions are always welcome.