A little over 10 days ago — give or take a few (don’t hold me to it) — one of our local radio DJs, during his afternoon news update, told how a Staten Island 15-year-old teenager, in classic Looney Tune style, fell down an open manhole while walking AND texting.<\/p>\n
He basically said that the consequences of her lack of attention were only a few mild cuts and bruises… and, yeah, the stench of landing in a bunch of sewer crap.<\/p>\n
And, like him, I was thinking, “Okay, watch where the hell you’re going next time… next! Give me some news that’s actually important now.”<\/p>\n
Then, after finding out about how city workers said they left the hole unattended (even if for only seconds) while they were obtaining cones and markers with which to barricade it, I just shook my head and wondered WHO (the city workers or the girl) didn’t get a big enough breakfast that day.<\/p>\n
Hey, accidents and lapses in thinking are part of life. They come, they go, we think or say “fuggetaboudit” and move on.<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, apparently not. The girl’s family decided to sue, and stated, “the city must compensate Alexa for the trauma of landing in a sewer.”<\/p>\n Yup, the absurdity of it is almost too silly to be true<\/span><\/strong>… yet, stories like this happen every day — and, to quickly be straight about why I’m bringing this up, they happen way, way too frequently.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One of our subscribers, who lives in a semi-rural area of Kansas, had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the DEER CROSSING sign on their road. The reason? <\/strong><\/p>\n Simply, said their neighbor: “Too many deer are being hit by cars out here! I don’t think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore.”<\/p>\n Can you just hear Bill Engvall saying: “Heeeeeere’s your sign!”?<\/strong><\/p>\n Okay, yes, I know this post is quite a departure from our last blog post about giving and sharing love — appreciating and adoring the mysteries and awe of all that is good.<\/p>\n Yet, like we’ve been saying for many years, it’s healthy every now and then to be curious and aware of the ridiculous and just plain “bad” too!<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n Simply because, Dear Watson, without the absurd, we wouldn’t KNOW the “sensible” and “wise”!<\/p>\n And, if you think about it hard enough, you begin to see that our contributions as a society and our desire to DO THE RIGHT THING only grow from the manure of human incompetence and ignorance.<\/p>\n But, hey, I ALREADY talked about that via another post<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, moving on to another story that’ll just make you “wonder”…<\/p>\n In the early to mid ’90s, a promising young financier, by the name of Dana Giacchetto, is hobnobbing with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. He molly-coddles to a crowd he knows best — musicians, artists and actors — because, well, he’s “fascinated” by them.<\/p>\n Click the ‘continue reading’ link below to find out what happens next<\/em><\/strong>…<\/p>\n —— Cont’d<\/em><\/span> ——<\/p>\n According to the T.V. show American Greed<\/em> and other collaborated reports, by late 1999, the “rock and roll broker” falls out of fashion with his clients. Nearly 10 million dollars is missing from client accounts!<\/p>\n Yet, somewhere between Hollywood’s trust and courtship of Giacchetto and his expos\u00e9 as a scam artist, theater and film producer Victoria Leacock Hofman, due to Giacchetto’s “in crowd” pedigreed persona, thinks it’s a rational thing to give the dude all her profits from the hit musical ‘RENT.’<\/p>\n As I watched her complain, whine, and feel sorry for herself on the documentary, I just couldn’t help but think:<\/p>\n “Damn, what’s the worst of two evils here: the ruthless brilliance and all-consuming self-loathing of the people at firms like Lehman Brothers and AIG, who knowingly make money by separating the gullible and laudatory masses from theirs… or… is it the\u00a0 wide-eyed, impressionable who will easily cry, ‘I’m a victim,’ even after knowing it was their own lack of judgment or rational thinking that got them netted in financial muck?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I truly have no sympathy for the Victorias of the world who “cry foul” AFTER making a hair-brained “I’m-going-to-let-one-person-handle-all-my-money” financial move. Just as equally, I despise the ego maniacs of the world, like Mr. Dana Giacchetto, who knowingly set intentions to destroy wealth, by having so little concern for the welfare of the people they’ve conned into trusting them.<\/p>\n Recently, Lawrence McDonald wrote a book called A Colossal Failure of Common Sense — The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers<\/em>.<\/p>\n McDonald, a former vice president at Lehman Brothers, offers an intimate look inside the mad house that Lehman became, and shows beyond a doubt that Lehman’s top executives were totally out to lunch, allowing Lehman’s risk profile to reach gargantuan proportions.<\/p>\n While his book title inspired me to give this blog post the same name, there’s more to life — much more — than knowing the nitty-gritty DETAILS about the craziness behind ONE financial giant.<\/p>\n Instead, I’m more interested in sharing my broader thoughts and giving some street-level commentary about how good ol’ fashioned, home-spun horse-sense<\/strong> — especially the financial kind — is becoming an endangered species.<\/p>\n This is why I’m so ab-so-lute-ly committed to getting our new membership — The Wealth Vault<\/em><\/strong><\/a> — off the ground. It’s a labor of love (and, yes, sometimes shock) to be digging up the “Insider Only” money-growing techniques and wealth-building programs that the masses rely on the establishment to flesh out for them<\/span>. That plan doesn’t work well because, of course, the establishment are<\/em> the “insiders”, and rarely do they let information out that’ll free the everyday Joe and Jane from relying on them.<\/p>\n