GOOD MANNERS RADICALLY INCREASE BUSINESS SUCCESS

     Many years ago I was shocked to learn that psychology studies have repeatedly concluded that nearly 90% of the reason customers decide to do business with us, personally, is HOW we look and HOW we speak.  Only roughly 10% depends on what we say, or what's on that Power Point slide.
     Being in the investment business at the time, this conclusion made total sense.  When I spoke to groups two or three times a week, instead of the audience understanding the color charts and graphs on the screen, they were sizing me up, personally, to see if I fit the picture of that investor they like on CNBC, if I used the same words they had read in the Wall Street Journal, and if I emitted the correct energy and character which would help them feel comfortable working with me.
     Today, we so easily get wrapped in the explanation, the details, the algorithm, that we forget what truly controls our business success, that 90%.  Peggy Noonan's recent WSJ column attempting to implore our society back to manners and proper formalities reminded me that JAM VIEWS was due for a little more Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."  This is the 90%.  This is why associates I have worked with have read it, and many have even provided me thorough book reports.  These are the A-Players who will always thrive.
     One year, to the dismay of my Second Street Restaurant partners, I even passed out the books to our service managers and bartenders.  My partners said, "You mean the same bartender I have to call every day to explain why its important for him to come to work today, you now want me to have him read Dale Carnegie?!"  If we could only get everyone to understand the true forces of the universe which control our success.
     Ms. Noonan reminds us in her column that we have grown even more rude, slovenly, indifferent and cold.  She claims great nations run on manners, "the lubricant that allows the great machine to hum," and I would add that this goes double for great businesses, great corporations.
     She, of course, has much angst with our current smartphone culture, in one hundred different ways, especially the 30-something screeching into her phone at the nail spa because she was "closing a deal!"  As she lists a few of the endless examples in business and society, she claims that to constantly correct these people "would be like slapping the maid."  One of my favorite lines.  So, let's review a few more important lessons from Mr. Carnegie this week:

1.  Appeal to Nobel Objectives.  Simply give people a fabulous reputation to live up to.  If you constantly tell your associates how hardworking and creative they are, they will eventually believe that they are, and their actions will emulate this instilled mindset.  If you constantly tell your management team how proud you are of them for handling the 1,000 personnel issues with compassion and strategic vision, they will naturally strive to be "that leader they have always wanted to be."  And, of course, if you tell your kids daily how ridiculously smart they are, their grades will reflect it, and if you tell your spouse everyday how much you admire their love and grace, you will be even more blown away by their actions and happiness.  We hold the power of the gods in our fingertips, on our lips, if we could just remember to use this power for good every day.

2.   Ask Questions Instead of Giving Direct Orders.  Unlike maybe you and me, 98% of the country has never served in the military.  The world has changed, and its not a one-factory town where the employees have to do what you say, or else.  People have options.  At the start of every corporate retreat,  I put up the the pyramid management chart, and I turn it upside down to communicate to the sales force and the operations staff that the CEO and the executives all work for them, not the other way around.
     We must achieve our influence by helping others find the answers themselves.  A brilliant leader facilitates and empowers everyone else to come up with all of the answers.  Even when a specific directive must be given, it is presented as a question, as an idea.  Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) all the way down to what coffee the office purchases must now be everyone else's ideas [at least they must think they are].
     Ever notice how your spouse will never follow through on the project you believe is of utmost importance, but if it's something they deeply care about they shock you with an unbelievable commitment and execution?!  Asking questions takes practice and requires much more wisdom and grace than giving orders, but I am confident you will soon master this, Grasshopper.

3.  Never say, "You're Wrong."  Most of us know that the moment we tell our colleague their opinion is wrong, a wall one-hundred-feet high goes up, and they become even more entrenched in their belief and opposed to anything further we have to say.  Unfortunately, we just can't stop ourselves from telling Bob, and everyone else, how stupid is his idea.  Then when we think we are at least trying to be kind, we throw in a Sandwich Theory attempt with, "Bob, I know have have put a lot of work into this and everyone admires your opinion, BUT you are simply wrong on this one."  This makes it worse.
     When we say "but," all the other human hears is, "Everything I just said before this 'but' is false, and likely condescending  or demeaning."  We must replace all "buts" with "ands" in every sentence.  Your success in achieving objectives will skyrocket, and your relationships will remain stronger for the next time you need Bob on your side.
     We must never use "but," especially in the most sensitive matters.  Recently, I was forced to petition the courts to remove the presiding judge from a legal matter in which she was, unfortunately, biased and conflicted in multiple ways.  I first stated that I had great respect for her service to the courts and the country, which is completely true.  Then I stated, "AND, unfortunately, in this specific matter" it appeared there needed to be a change.  I believed it was key to show the proper respect to the other party, and we certainly didn't want them to feel patronized.  Put up Post-it Notes on your computer screen, on the bathroom mirror, everywhere that say "No Buts!"

     Have a great week and remember that great manners are the lubricant of success!

"Your playing small does not serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do...And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."  -  Marianne Williamson-Book, "A Return to Love"

** Thank you again to Mr. Dale Carnegie and the WSJ for the above quotations and statistics.

** For more information on Jeff's Books, Blog, and Legal Challenge, please visit www.jeffmartinovich.com.

** To access JAM Views directly please visit jeffreyamartinovich.blogspot.com 

* SUBSCRIBE TO JAM VIEWS

* PLEASE USE THE BELOW SHARE BUTTONS TO SPREAD THE WORD!

JACK WELCH IS NO DOUBT THROWING UP!
     Last week you may have seen that the Business Roundtable, an influential group of approximately 200 CEOs from our country's largest corporations, rewrote their Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation to proclaim that it is no more based solely on yielding the highest profits for its shareholders.  Rather, the purpose now is to consider the rights and needs of all "stakeholders" - employees, customers, and society at large [insert "Government'].
     We are not at the edge of the slippery slope.  We are screaming down the hill in our Freedom Flyer unaware of that huge snow ramp that creates the three-week tail bone bruise.  Of course, all successful corporations know that the employees, customers, and a healthy community are vitally important to long-term success, yet it has been the pure and clean capitalism model of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, ensuring the self-interests of shareholders remain the preeminent purpose of companies, which has protected the onward and upward march of the United States of America.  The embarrassingly-low GDPs of Germany, France, England and the rest, all "in business" for hundreds and thousand of years longer than us, show us the antithesis, the socialism, the concerns for society which in turn hurt society.  Congratulations to Elizabeth Warren who has successfully scared the common sense out of 200 CEOs.
     In 1970, economist Milton Friedman wrote in the New York Times (of all places) that profitable businesses serve the common good so much better than executives who spend money on social responsibility.  Also, he explained how CEOs who put social responsibility over shareholders feed the public belief that free markets and business are "wicked and immoral" and must be curbed by "external forces," which "will be the iron fist of Government bureaucrats."  So prescient of today's Roundtable, he concluded that "businessmen seem to me to reveal a suicidal impulse."  Or, as we state today, "Where have all the real leaders gone?"
     Ayn Rand would say that now is the time they have all withdrawn from leading our great nation and retreated to "Gault's Gulch."  These leaders will finally be joined by Dagny Taggart, her heroine of "Atlas Shrugged," who will be the last to give in to the technocrats destroying our free markets and success.
     J.P. Morgan's Chief, Jamie Dimon, is currently leading the Roundtable charge with support from his buddy, Warren Buffet.  These two exemplify the textbook change in uber-wealthy business leaders, normally in their 60's, when they suddenly feel great guilt for their outsized wealth.  They begin promoting higher taxes on the rest of us, along with renouncing the very same corporate governance, tax planning, and concerns for self interests which created the incredible wealth for so many individuals and communities in the first place.  Textbook.
     The Roundtable voted 181-7 in favor of the change in their mission statement with one very interesting dissenter, Larry Culp, the new CEO of General Electric.  On multiple occasions JAM VIEWS has highlighted GE's fall from grace, but now I might have great hope for their rise from the ashes!  Where is Jack when we need him?
     In our Building Special Companies course, Jack Welch, the tremendously successful CEO of General Electric from 1981-2001, is prominently featured in lessons teaching our students how to hire and grow "A-Players," as well as in building substantial net worth.  During Jack's tenure at GE, the stock price rose 4,000% as annual profits (not revenue) surpassed $15 billion.  Jack taught the world to hire A's, train B's to become A's, and fire the C's.  In his two seminal management books, "Straight From the Gut" and "Winning," Jack built upon Adam Smith and Milton Friedman to teach us that the most important mission of a corporation was to be highly profitable.  This profitability brought employee security, new opportunities, more jobs, hope, college funds, retirement funds, good health, and the opportunity to truly provide charity for our fellow man.  Who does the socialist need?  They need rich business leaders who actually create the money, of course.
     Jack professed differentiation and meritocracy, and despised equality and redistribution.  He raged against the fake cause of social responsibility.  Unfortunately, once Jack's time passed, Jeffrey Immelt took the reins at GE, and to Jack's horror drove it into the ground while focusing on "stakeholders."  The Wall Street Journal has called Immelt "the model of the stakeholder executive, posing in Vanity Fair as a spokesman against climate change, issuing pronouncements after the 2008 panic about the failures of capitalism."  Immelt forgot what his job was and destroyed the golden goose, therefore harming all of the stakeholders to which he professed to be helping.
     Remember the JAM VIEWS constant theme; those who preach to help others do not, while those scorned as taking advantage of others are the ones truly taking care of them.  Truth since the beginning of time.
     Hopefully, the CEOs will lighten up on their lunch cocktails at the Oak Room (maybe better yet reinstitute lunch cocktails) and also remember another JAM VIEWS truism for dealing with Elizabeth Warren and her Gang; never appease an oppressor.  The only successful strategy throughout history has been to oppress the oppressor.

"When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled unregulated laissez-faire capitalism with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church."  - Ayn Rand

**Many thanks to the WSJ, Forbes and Fortune for the above quotes and statistics.

** For more information on Jeff's Books, Blog, and Legal Challenge, please visit www.jeffmartinovich.com.

** To access JAM Views directly please visit jeffreyamartinovich.blogspot.com 

* SUBSCRIBE TO JAM VIEWS

* PLEASE USE THE BELOW SHARE BUTTONS TO SPREAD THE WORD!

UPDATES - FOLLOW THE FACTS, NOT THE NARRATIVE

     This week we want to review some important updates.  There is much positive karma going on out there - which of course you would never hear in the news - and the potential is even so much greater if capitalism and education are permitted to keep quietly flourishing (well maybe not so quietly).  Here are some facts:

1.  Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, recently released a report explaining the true job growth and "reversing of income inequality" now occurring in the United States.  Low tax rates and deregulation are creating 200,000 new jobs a month for our citizens in 2019, which is roughly double the number needed to keep up with population growth.  So, 100,000 citizens per month are still coming off the unemployment rolls!  More than 70% of the people taking these new jobs reported that in the prior month they weren't even looking for work!  Yes, the opportunities are too good to resist, even for all of the people who had considered themselves disabled and preferred a government check.  Wow.
     Interestingly, as unemployment has plummeted to 3.6%, unemployment for recent community college and vocational school grads is 30-40% less than four-year college grads.  Wake up call for the under-achieving university system in our country?  Wages are increasing over 3% and the "less educated" wages are growing nearly double the "educated."  Wages in mining are up 7.5%, leisure and hospitality 4.4% and retail 4.3%, while wages in finance are up 2.3%.  No wonder the elites, technocrats and trust fund babies are losing their minds!  Go with the facts, not the false narratives spread by those with the microphones.

2.  The smart ones understand that nuclear energy is the energy answer for the future, and holds a far greater potential than the next-best alternative.  Yet, the elites continue to pursue nonsensical agendas to simply stir up voters.  Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public works, recently attempted to overcome the barriers to finally completing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waster storage facility in Nevada.  He claims that if the U.S. is serious about climate change, we must become serious about nuclear energy.  Nuclear power generates roughly 20% of our power today and 60% of our carbon-free energy, which is more than 3X the energy produced by wind and 18X the amount of solar.
     The Yucca Mountain storage site is larger than Massachusetts and is determined to safely contain this material for at least a million years, while new technologies are dramatically reducing even this storage requirement.  Because of "New Green" plans, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stopped work on Yucca in 2015, and eight states have passed laws against building more nuclear capability until this is resolved.
     Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, attempted to clarify the true "waste and destruction" which must occur to meet global agendas such as the Paris Accord.  A single electric-car battery weighs 1,000 pounds, while fabricating one requires digging up and processing 500,000 pounds of raw materials "somewhere on the planet."  Building a wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete, and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic, while solar power requires even more cement, steel, and glass plus rare-earth elements.
     To meet these "renewable" agendas, silver mining must jump 250%, indium 1,200%, and other elements 300-1,000%.  Finally, don't forget that more than 90% of the world's solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electric grids blacking out the sky at today's levels, and the 2050 Paris Accord targets for solar will result in the disposal of more than double the tonnage of today's global plastic waste. [But at least Starbuck's is using paper straws!].

3.  In our continuous campaign to support school choice and charter schools, we wanted to highlight Baker Mitchell's fantastic efforts in North Carolina.  A retired electrical engineer who sold his company and began volunteering as an elementary school science teacher, Mr. Mitchell became inspired by Thaddeus Lott, the principal of the high-achieving, low-income Wesley Elementary in Houston.  He became so inspired that he founded the Roger Bacon Academy which oversees four charter schools in southeastern North Carolina.  He recently published a report to counter the opposition's current strategy to play the race card to stop these successful schools.  He reports that in North Carolina charter schools have a 26.1% black enrollment versus 25.2% for state district schools.  The report presented to the North Carolina General Assembly this year confirmed that at virtually every grade level and virtually every student subgroup - white, African American, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities, and students with limited English proficiency - charters outperformed the district schools in English, math and science.  As 40% or more of Roger Bacon's students come from low-income households, Mr. Mitchell says his critics simply "do not want families making education decisions for their children.  The system does not want to lose control or money."  We are incredibly grateful for warriors like Mr. Mitchell.

     Know the facts.  Don't succumb to the narratives.  Have a great week!

"The two of us are quite rich...both of us are sons of immigrants who came to these shores with almost nothing...we know that we can spend our dollars more wisely, and in ways that benefit our communities and our country, than politicians can...the businesses we created have employed hundreds of thousands of Americans...We have given more than $2 billion to charity...Our patriotism is measured not in how much we pay in taxes - which is a lot - but in the businesses and the wealth and the jobs we create."  -  Bernie Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot, and John Catsimatidis, owner of Red Apple Group.

** Thank you very much to the WSJ, Forbes, and Fortune for the above quotations and statistics.

** For more information on Jeff's Books, Blog, and Legal Challenge, please visit www.jeffmartinovich.com.

** To access JAM Views directly please visit jeffreyamartinovich.blogspot.com 

* SUBSCRIBE TO JAM VIEWS

* PLEASE USE THE BELOW SHARE BUTTONS TO SPREAD THE WORD!

EXPAND YOUR BUSINESS BRAIN
     Periodically in JAM VIEWS we cover a strategy from my 25-lesson course "Building Special Companies" which was founded on the upcoming book "Zero to a Billion to Zero," Ash Press, 2020.  The hopes of this course and book are for our members, and so many more, to capitalize on the successful strategies implemented by the very smart people I have had the privilege to work with, along with learning from the errors which I have personally made along the way, all so that our members may better navigate around these challenges, themselves.
     Recently I had the opportunity to read "Exponential Organizations" by Salim Ismail, Michael Malone and Yuri Van Geest.  This book takes many of the "Building Special Companies" business fundamentals and puts them on steroids, blood doping, the hyperbaric chamber, and even those LeBron compression boots to turn small companies into Unicorns ($1 billion valuations).  Salim and his associates, which also include the founders of Singularity University, Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil (also Google's AI Chief), have put together a fantastic study of moving solid business fundamentals into the age of crowdsourcing, digital communities and going viral.  Let's cover a couple concepts this week:

1.  Think exponentially, not linearly:  When asked how we grew our consulting firm at an average annual growth rate of 36% for nearly two decades, my first answer has always been, "Because we simply believed that we could," and my second answer has been, "Because we didn't know we weren't supposed to."  So much of business, and life, is simply believing it should be so.  You hear this termed the lens of the camera, laws of attraction, or simply your worldview.  Once you believe this to be your paradigm, you will readily adopt strategies which are congruent with this viewpoint, and you will not waste time on actions which are not consistent with this mission.
     Ismail, Malone & Van Geest define the Exponential Organization (ExO) as one "whose impact (or output) is disproportionally large - at least 10x larger - compared to its peers because of the use of new organizational techniques that leverage accelerating technologies."  While traditional companies can only achieve arithmetic outputs per input, ExOs achieve geometric outputs.  You are likely familiar with the sixty-year history of Moore's Law which states that price/performance is cut in half every eighteen months (think flat screens, laptops, cell phones).  Now, the business power of the internet has even cut this halving to nine months, and in some industries even one month!
     Coca Cola thinks linearly; for each new worker hired, factory built and new customer acquired, we will sell x cans of Coke.  ExOs sell more cans of Coke without adding anything into the input side of the equation. [Oh yeah, remember that when you are growing so much faster than everyone else, the C-Players will scream that you are cheating.  So be ready for it, and just roll with it].  Now, stay with me.

2.  You know I couldn't resist telling you that these strategists also believe that nearly every "expert" is wrong, and they urge us not to waste our time, or brain power, following the experts [I knew they were JAM VIEWS readers!].  Eastman Kodak invented, and then rejected, the digital camera before declaring bankruptcy in 2012.  McKinsey & Company advised AT&T not to enter the mobile phone business, predicting there would be fewer than one million in use by 2000 [There were 100 million in use by 2000 - a 99% market miscalculation, not to mention the biggest opportunity in modern times].
     Growth is blowing away every prediction of government technocrats and Wall street analysts.  The same 3D printer cost $40,000 in 2007 which now costs $100.  The same drone which cost $100,000 in 2007 now costs $700.  Solar energy cost $30 per kWh in 1984 and now costs $0.16 per kWh.  Medicine's full body scan cost $10,000 in 2000 (I got one!) and now costs $500.  Humans cannot predict these trends or astronomical results.  Get comfortable with the fact that you do not know what you do not know, and you will perform well beyond the masses following the experts.

3.  In "Building Special Companies," we teach the participants to outsource everything, as opposed to all of the employees, leases, and fixed assets I years ago collected on our balance sheets.  Today, Mr. Ismail thinks we would be crazy to have any employees or other assets in our corporations.  We just need to borrow everyone else's stuff!
     Contract out all employees, and better yet have your crowd and community do all the work for free.  These people who believe in your mission have current skills (no constant retraining required), and they are proven much more capable than captured talent experts.  In 2011, Allstate Insurance, who employed 40 of the best actuaries and data scientists money could buy, ran a public contest to see if anyone could improve on its claims algorithm which they had carefully optimized for six decades.  Within three days, 107 teams did it better, and at the end of three months, the algorithm had been improved 271 percent [hopefully they fired the 40 experts!].
     DIY Drones, a community of volunteers, has been able to design and build a drone with 98% functionality of the military's Predator drone, with one difference:  A Predator costs $4 million and a DIY drone costs just under $300.

4.  Use your community and crowd to bring customer-acquisition costs, and even service costs, to zero.  Nurture the community by providing them inspiration (a "Massive Transformative Purpose"), and then listen and give back to your group every day.  I have always preached that "people just want to be inspired!"  Most people lead lives of "quiet desperation," but if you can engage their minds and their hearts, they will blow you away with their creativity, effort and persistence.
     Help people become friends.  Connect your peer-to-peer platform.  Everything and everyone is rated, internally in the company and externally in the community.  Join the thousands of other communities  already out there with compatible missions.  These groups sell your products or services because they simply want to, and it does not cost you a penny.  They even take over your customer service function as your "raving fans" help each other answer questions and fix problems in this peer-to-peer world.  Your community will now handle your idea generation, funding, design, distribution, marketing and sales.
     Have you ever participated in a Kickstarter or Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign?  The site collects all pre-orders for a new product, and then if enough people purchase, the site releases the money to the developer to now create the product.  Entrepreneurs validate market demand before building the product!
     Did you know that Hyatt has 45,000 employees spread across 549 properties and is worth less than Airbnb with just 1,324 employees located in a single office?
     Expand your mind!  Have a great week!

"In short, a five-year plan is a suicidal practice for an ExO...implement a one-year plan (at most) and watch it all scale while course-correcting in real time."  -  Ismail, Malone & Van Geest

**  Many thanks, and a great recommendation, to Salim Ismail, Michael Malone and Yuri Van Geest for "Exponential Organizations," Diversion Books.

For more information on Jeff's Books, Blog, and Legal Challenge, please visit www.jeffmartinovich.com.

** To access JAM Views directly please visit jeffreyamartinovich.blogspot.com 

* SUBSCRIBE TO JAM VIEWS

* PLEASE USE THE BELOW SHARE BUTTONS TO SPREAD THE WORD!

ECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALS IN TROUBLE!
     As kids we were taught that if we didn't get the fundamentals correct, we would fail when it came time to perform.  If we spent the summer at the pool instead of practicing left-handed layups, or fielding grounders at the hot corner, that kid across town would eat our lunch come time for the District Championships.  John Wooden, Pete Rose, and Carli Lloyd have taught us that without strong fundamentals, when the pressure is on, we will eventually fail.
     Today our focus on identify politics, socialism, and how many Instagram followers we can build has caused us to take our eye off the economic fundamentals.  Remember JAM VIEWS members, when the money doesn't work nothing else matters.  The scary part today is that momentum, kinetic energy, just seems to keep this reality TV show going until one day it doesn't.  Let's take a current inventory of broken fundamentals:

1.  Negative interest rates in Europe are such a "no big deal" now that the European Central Bank is moving to cut interest rates even further and to reinitiate quantitative easing (flooding more money into the system).  As a reminder, 40% of global bonds yield less than 1% and over $13 trillion (yes, trillion) of bonds have negative interest rates (you pay them to hold your money!).  I frequently get the question, "Why would anyone do that?"  The paradoxical answer is that U.S. and global pensions, insurers, and financial institutions have so much money (especially with the extra $12 trillion printed out of thin air by the U.S. in 2008) that they have to put it somewhere.  Their legal, regulatory, and liquidity constraints, along with their own Investment Policy Statements, mandate that a significant percentage of their portfolio be allocated in government and corporate AA and AAA-rated securities.  Therefore, it is mandated that they make irrational investment decisions because of previous irrational decisions against the fundamentals - technocrats and corporate lemmings all going with the flow, rationalizing to a farmer in Iowa that this is how it has to be.

2.  The U.S. Federal Reserve just lowered interest rates in fear of the U.S. economy beginning to stall, trade war impacts, and the dollar strengthening against other currencies "because they are lowering rates also."  Whatever happened to the U.S. Federal Reserve's self-imposed mandate to focus on stable currency and 2% inflation (as wrong as that may be)?  Why did the Federal Reserve raise interest rates last December when the stock market was tanking, credit markets were seizing up, and inflation expectations were falling, only to now lower rates this week while equities are at record new highs and wages in June grew at 5.5% year over year according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)?  Remember another JAM VIEWS message - the government technocrats have no idea what they are doing and never have.  This is why, in relation to currency, we should follow the advice of Steve Forbes and likely new Fed board nominee, Judy Shelton, and return to a gold standard - or some fixed standard - to take control out of the hands of ivy-league elitists who have mucked it up for decades.

3.  Speaking of the gold standard, always discard Washington's rationales for leaving the standard, and know that it simply was about printing more money.  If we had fixed weights and measures, we could not print more money and just pray that the rest of the world keeps following the full faith and credit of the U.S. dollar.  The current Administration has done a Herculean job of implementing fiscal changes back in the direction of Adam Smith and free markets.  Not only are wages up significantly for the 99%, but the personal savings rate was also revised upward to 8.1%, meaning that we all are not over-leveraging ourselves as in other bubble economies.  Employee compensation has increased 42% more during the last two years than in 2015 and 2016 (those are huge numbers for real people).  EMPLOYEE compensation grew by nearly $1 trillion between 2016 and 2018.  Wow.
     Yet, remember in your business fundamentals course on income and liabilities when they explained that all of the income growth in the world won't help if you are spending even more?  Remember when your parents fought all night about the checkbook and claimed they could never get ahead even with three jobs unless they cut the spending?  With all "thy getting" we are now getting, we are still spending even more.  Why can't we make politicians stop spending our money?  Why do we allow them to just print more debt out of thin air to fund their "compromises?"  Are we that distracted and apathetic to try to understand, to try and stop them?  Because of the tax cuts and regulation cuts, Federal tax revenue is up (don't let the misinformed tell you otherwise), yet spending is also way up.  Who will cut entitlements?  The rest is down in the noise.  Understand the fundamentals.

4.  Finally, there are so many signs that, unless we get back to economic fundamentals, that kid across town is about ready to embarrass us in the District Championships.  This year, gold has risen 10% against the U.S. dollar, and alternative currencies like bitcoin are up 160% against the dollar.  Are the increases in these alternative stores of wealth signaling a crisis in confidence in fiat currencies (paper money)?  When will the punch bowl be taken away?
     When it happens, as it always has and always will, let's hope everyone has studied the last seventy JAM VIEWS posts and are prepared for the next Black Swan.  With tens of trillions of more dollars in the system (M1, M2 & that stuff) ready to ignite at the first hint of inflation, as well as over a quadrillion dollars (yes, quadrillion) of derivatives now trading in the financial markets (both tremendously more than in 2008), the "impact" from a hiccup will make 2008 look like a rounding error.  And, wait until we add in free college for everyone, free medical for everyone in the Western Hemisphere, and turn all corporations into government agencies.  Check please!

     May we stay diligent this week, seek education and understanding, and find our own truths.  Have a great week!

"Give me a lever long enough, and I'll move the world."  -  Archimedes

** Thank you very much to the WSJ, Forbes and Fortune for the above quotations and statistics.

** For more information on Jeff's Books, Blog, and Legal Challenge, please visit www.jeffmartinovich.com.

** To access JAM Views directly please visit jeffreyamartinovich.blogspot.com 

* SUBSCRIBE TO JAM VIEWS

* PLEASE USE THE BELOW SHARE BUTTONS TO SPREAD THE WORD!