Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
I’m not sure the best things in life are free, but a lot sure is. These are the trees in my yard (make that garden for my English friends).

A Vagabond Song – Bliss Carman
THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

The following vid made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Granted, there is likely a measure of posturing going on to convince countries they’d better seriously step up … but neither do I think for a moment these people are being frivolous. Kinda made me want to learn how to hunt and grow my own food. DISCLAIMER: I’m not an economist! Just took a couple courses waaaaay back in the day. So this is just my armchair take.

A super important thing to understand: Bank Capitalization

When you give your $1 to the Bank, they then can invest that $1 to make profit (of which a teensy portion goes to you as interest).

Usually, banks invest that $1 by loaning to Joe the Pizza Man down the street so he can buy a second pizza stand, or to Cindy so she can buy a bungalow.

But here’s the super-important bit: The Gov’t allows the bank not to simply lend out that $1, but perhaps $8 or more. Why? Because of faith.

Faith that Joe probably will succeed in his biz and pay back not just that $1, but the full $8.

Faith that Cindy will pay her mortgage as agreed upon every month.

Faith that those effing bastards on Wall Street would similarly use the money with integrity as they select investments. They didn’t.

Bank Capitalization refers to how many $1s they in fact have. In short, how much that have that is real, not faith-based. That faith is well and truly shaken.
And all our intricate webs between banks and businesses and countries are seriously frayed.

Photo Credit: komodoro

1. Steve Jobs is dead. A light went out folks.  A light went out.

2. #OccupyWallStreet If you’re not keeping informed about what’s going down in the heart of the financial district, you probably should be. You won’t find much about it in mainstream media (any guesses why) but I’m pretty sure this is history in the making. While there is no one “key message” (which would be a contradiction in terms for the protesters), they do coalesce around these common themes:

• citizens should be at the heart of public policy, not money
• corporate money should not have nearly the influence it has
• a call for society to re-order itself to close the gap between the rich and poor

This protester spoke eloquently to Fox News (and the interview was never aired):

3. And the IMF had some things to say about Canada’s real estate market as had Mark Carney (Governor, Bank of Canada) housing market back in June. Worth the read.

Good day, Globe & Mail visitors and welcome!

If you’d like to learn about my money coaching business,  it’s over here.

If you’d like to hear my rags-to-riches (well, not HUGE riches, but a decided turnaround) click the 2 min vid to the right.

Other than that, browse around my blog.  September posts may be particularly of interest – a series of Money 101s like how to bust a poverty mindset, how to recover from financial disappointment, and whether you should save money whilst carrying debt.

Questions for me? I respond to e-mails:  nancy {at} your money by design dot com

Thanks for popping by!

And thanks to Andrea, a Smart Cookie, for a fun interview.

Don’t flame or tase me: I have some praise for the Conservatives. Yes, I’m still Green – I think business, particularly small business, can save the world if given every opportunity, with the imperative caveat that we (businesses small and large) must incontrovertibly demonstrate the way we do our business is of benefit to people and the planet in addition to being profitable. How anyone can argue with this beats me.
So am I a lefty? Progressive? Conservative? I like to believe I defy right | left categories.

Certainly I’ve been known, though, to publicly protest actions of Canada’s conservatives and my most popular blog post is one in which I went ape-shit about how we in Vancouver used to treat our homeless (arresting them for sleeping outside, for god’s sake). My point? I’m not typically an apologist for the Conservatives.

But.

After my month in England and concentrated doses of BBC reporting and the immediacy of what’s gong on in Greece, I have a deepened respect for policies which get and keep us out of national debt. National debt, just like personal debt, gets a stranglehold on a country, and then takes them down.

Consider this: Greece funded its many worthy social objectives with debt for years. Now, it has to pay nearly 20% (at time of this writing – July) on its bonds. Canada only has to pay 0.65% because of our relatively sane debt levels. Yes, I know much of that should be attributed to Paul Martin under the Liberals. But it also is attributable to Michael Wilson (Finance Min. under Mulroney) and also attributable to the perception that the Conservative Gov’t will keep the debt in check.

What does this mean? It means the same sort of thing that it means for individuals. Because we are (relatively) in good shape on our debt to earnings ratio, we are considered a good risk and just like individuals who have handled their debt well and can get the best interest rates on their credit cards and their mortgages, so Canada can borrow money from other countries and its own citizens at the best rates. This translates to more of our taxes going to programs and less of our money going to dealing with our debt.

I’m good with that. If I’m going to be taxed (and I don’t inherently object to being taxed at all; I want to live in a society that funds the arts and takes care of the vulnerable and funds higher education) I don’t want it to be paying off debt, or worse, simply paying the interest. And if the Conservative Gov’t helps us on that, measured props to them.

Photo credit: British PMO office (somewhat ironic, eh? no photos avail from the Cdn PMO)