Canada makes national anthem gender neutral

Yahoo – AFP, February 2, 2018

Two words were amended in Canada's national anthem, "O Canada," making the 

song gender neutral and incurring the wrath of conservatives and traditionalists

 (AFP Photo/DON EMMERT)

Ottawa (AFP) - Canadians will soon be singing a new tune after parliament passed a bill to change the lyrics of the national anthem to make it gender neutral.

Only one line in O Canada was amended, from "True patriot love in all thy sons command" to "True patriot love in all of us command."

But it has caused quite a stir.

"It's about two words," Senator Frances Lankin told reporters. "But it's huge in terms of one of our major national symbols, the anthem we sing with pride about our country."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the move "another positive step towards gender equality," while feminist author Margaret Atwood, who has been pressing for this since the 1980s, tweeted her thanks to lawmakers.

Others decried the new lyrics and vowed to continue to sing the older version.

"Disappointed to hear the Liberals changed our national anthem. Somethings (sic) shouldn't change," said MP Bob Saroya in a Twitter message.

The late MP Mauril Belanger had proposed the change to the English language version of the anthem.

Belanger was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, shortly after his party, under Trudeau, took power in 2015.

The proposal passed the House two months before Belanger's death in 2016, and late Wednesday the Senate added its support for the bill.

Now it needs only the governor general's signature to become law, which is a formality, but a date for that has not yet been set.

"It will receive royal ascent in due course," Sabrina Atwal, spokeswoman for government House leader Bardish Chagger, told AFP.

The French version of O Canada, which has not been revised, was originally commissioned by Quebec's lieutenant governor in 1880. The English version followed in 1906.

In 1914 the phrase "thou dost in us command" was changed to "in all thy sons command." A verse was added a decade later.

There have been several attempts in recent decades to further amend the lyrics of the song -- which only officially became Canada's anthem in 1980 -- but they all failed largely due to the entrenched opposition of Conservative lawmakers.

Today the anthem is sung at the beginning of sporting events and in schools across Canada at the start of classes, often mixing both French and English versions.

Climate aid from rich nations at $62 bn in 2014: report

Yahoo – AFP, Marlowe Hood, October 7, 2015

An Indian worker walks past lines of solar panels at Roha Dyechem solar plant in the

western Indian state of Rajasthan on August 23, 2015 (AFP Photo/Money Sharma)

Rich nations have stepped up their climate aid for poorer nations, paying $62 billion (55 billion euros) last year, approaching a $100-billion annual target for 2020, the OECD said Wednesday.

Up from $52 billion in 2013, the figure represented "significant progress towards the $100-billion goal", said a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an intergovernmental research body.

The new numbers will provide fodder for finance ministers and central bank chiefs meeting in Lima, Peru this week, where climate change is high on the agenda.

Street lamps powered by wind and solar

 energy line the side of a road in Kenya

on August 19, 2015 (AFP Photo/Tony

Karumba)

Cash flows from rich countries -- both public and private -- are a make-or-break component of the 195-nation UN climate talks tasked with delivering a comprehensive carbon-cutting pact in December.

"We've come up with a figure that we do think is credible," said Simon Buckle, who oversaw the drafting of the report, the first attempt to pull together all the available numbers.

Requested by governments, the analysis lays out a much-needed framework for tracking how money earmarked for climate action moves between countries, development banks and private sources, the authors said.

Up to now the lack of clarity on whether money was public or private, in the form of grants or loans, or earmarked for greenhouse gas reduction or bracing for climate impacts, has blocked progress in the UN climate negotiations.

Developing nations, which have made finance a red-line issue, are wary of double-counting and the inclusion of non-climate projects in the final tally.

"The report provides transparency by breaking down the aggregate estimate of climate finance into its main financial elements," the report said.

NGOs and analysts reacted with caution.

The report, they said, is encouraging but unlikely to satisfy poor nations looking for hard assurances.

The promise to pony up at least $100 billion in climate aid per year from 2020 was one of the few concrete decisions to emerge from the troubled 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

Another was the goal of capping average planet warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above mid-19th century levels.

The OECD analysis does not make projections to 2020.

"The positive signal is that climate finance flows are on a upward trajectory," said Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros of the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based think-tank. "Countries still have time to step up."

'Peanuts'

More than 70 percent of the total for 2014 came from the public sector -- $20.4 billion from multilateral sources such as development banks, and $23.1 billion from bilateral sources, mainly grants and loans from one government to another.

"We were pleasantly surprised to see that the lion's share of the number is actually public finances," said Jens Mattias Clausen, a climate finance analyst with Greenpeace.

Most developing countries insist that the bulk of the promised money should be from public and government funds.

The report also offers the first estimated breakdown of money for both mitigation, or greenhouse gas reduction, and adaptation -- preparing for the droughts, superstorms and water shortages which scientists say will be aggravated by global warming.

More than three-quarters of the money went to mitigation, a fact which is likely to upset poor nations demanding more cash to help them prepare for these impacts.

An egret looks for food on cracked mud at the bottom of a dried up reservoir in

Pingdingshan, central China's Henan province on July 30, 2014 (AFP Photo)

"This is a far cry from what developing nations are expecting," said Clausen.

While the $62 billion is seen as encouraging, experts cautioned that there's still a big gap to fill before reaching the 2020 goal.

There is also the question of what happens after that.

"The report doesn't address the fact that the $100-billion figure itself is inadequate," said Alden Meyer, a veteran climate policy analyst with the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

"Nor does it address how to assure that climate finance ramps up well beyond $100 billion a year after 2020," he said by email.

Also left unmentioned is the hugely contentious issue of payouts for damages -- past and future -- caused by global warming.

Money for "loss and damage", as it is called, would be over and above what is already pledged.

"A hundred billion dollars is peanuts when you look at what will actually be needed," Clausen said.

UN chief tells African leaders not to 'cling to power'

Yahoo – AFP, 30 Jan 2015

Ban Ki-moon says African leaders should not use undemocratic constitutional 

changes and legal loopholes to cling to power (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)

Addis Ababa (AFP) - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday told African leaders gathered for an annual summit to not cling to power and respect the wishes of their people.

"People around the world have expressed their concern about leaders who refuse to leave office when their terms end. I share those concerns. Undemocratic constitutional changes and legal loopholes should never be used to cling to power," he said in a speech at the start of an African Union summit.

"I urge all leaders, in Africa and around the world, to listen to your people. Modern leaders cannot afford to ignore the wishes and aspirations of those they represent."

In October, chaos in Burkina Faso erupted as lawmakers prepared to vote to allow 63-year-old Blaise Compaore -- who took power in a 1987 coup -- to contest elections in November 2015. He was forced out of power.

Earlier this month in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as many as 42 people were killed in protests that erupted agains a bill that was seen as an attempt to extend President Joseph Kabila's hold on power in the nation he has led for 14 years.

Countries including Benin, Burundi, and Congo-Brazzaville and Rwanda are all said to be considering change to allow their leaders a third term.

Other African nations where laws have been changed to the benefit of their sitting leaders include Algeria, Angola, Chad, Djibouti and Uganda.

Related Articles:

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"The Timing of the Great Shift" – Mar 21, 2009 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“… PHASE THREE

The years 2013 to 2025 are the final phase. I tell you now that these things are going to sound too grand. What I give you now are only potentials and you may hear them and say, "Well, those are just potentials. They're too grand. Those things can't happen." Go back with me 20 years. All the potentials I gave you in 1989 took place. They took place because that was what was within the potentials. It was a reading of humanity within your consciousness. So I do it again, now. These are the potentials for the final phase of the Great Shift.

The first one is the adjustment of actual Human societal thinking. It represents the energies in the way you work and think. These are the kind of things a sociologist would study. Let me give it another name: It's an actual shift to a higher vibration of Human nature. "Kryon, that's impossible. Human nature is Human nature. We can't change it." Well, you've already begun it. You're starting to clean up your financial institutions worldwide. Did you notice? Dear ones, if anyone had ever told you 30 years ago that you were going to clean up your financial institutions, they would have laughed. For don't you know the way society works? Those who have the money win. Banks hold all the cards, and they are run by the those in high places. They are untouchable, since the government is often the same people! Well, why don't you tell them that today. Look around you, because something just happened. It's not working that way, is it? What would make the difference? Consciousness. A new paradigm. You can see it in the news.

Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013. They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader. Remember where you heard it... in a strange, esoteric meeting with a guy in a chair pretending to channel. [Kryon being factious... Kryon humor] Then when you hear it, you'll know better, won't you? "Maybe there was something really there," you'll say. "Maybe it was real," you'll say. Perhaps you can skip all the drama of the years to come and consider that now? [Kryon humor again]

These leaders are going to fall over. You'll have a slow developing leadership coming to you all over the earth where there is a new energy of caring about the public. "That's just too much to ask for in politics, Kryon." Watch for it. That's just the beginning of this last phase. So many things are coming. The next one is related to this, for a country in survival with sickness cannot sustain a leadership of high consciousness. There is just too much opportunity for power and greed. But when a continent is healed, everything changes.

The next one: You're going to heal a continent. Watch for it. It begins. Watch for major shift in Africa. We have said this before, even within the meetings I spoke in what you call the United Nations. Africa has never even been a potential player in the economic field, because it has been sick. What happens when you heal a continent? I'm going to tell you. Suddenly, the people on that continent also want what you have - government that works, peace, their own homes, schools, hospitals, and even banks where they can borrow from. They don't have any of those now, not really. Everything with substance is from somewhere else. That means you're going to have a continent that's going to arise that will become a major player on the stage of Earth's finances and political influence - an entire continent with all the resources on it, with even the potential for unification of common purpose, much like what you have now in your EU. I'm giving you information, and when it happens, again, I say you'll remember where you heard it.

Many years ago, the prevailing thought was that nobody should consider China as a viable player on the economic stage. They were backward, filled with a system that would never be westernized, and had no wish to become joined with the rest of the world's economic systems. Look what has happened in only 30 years. Now, look at Africa differently.   …”

"The End of History"- Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) - (Text-Version)

" .... Africa

Let me tell you where else it's happening that you are unaware - that which is the beginning of the unity of the African states. Soon the continent will have what they never had before, and when that continent is healed and there is no AIDS and no major disease, they're going to want what you have. They're going to want houses and schools and an economy that works without corruption. They will be done with small-minded leaders who kill their populations for power in what has been called for generations "The History of Africa." Soon it will be the end of history in Africa, and a new continent will emerge.

Be aware that the strength may not come from the expected areas, for new leadership is brewing. There is so much land there and the population is so ready there, it will be one of the strongest economies on the planet within two generations plus 20 years. And it's going to happen because of a unifying idea put together by a few. These are the potentials of the planet, and the end of history as you know it.

In approximately 70 years, there will be a black man who leads this African continent into affluence and peace. He won't be a president, but rather a planner and a revolutionary economic thinker. He, and a strong woman with him, will implement the plan continent-wide. They will unite. This is the potential and this is the plan. Africa will arise out the ashes of centuries of disease and despair and create a viable economic force with workers who can create good products for the day. You think China is economically strong? China must do what it does, hobbled by the secrecy and bias of the old ways of its own history. As large as it is, it will have to eventually compete with Africa, a land of free thinkers and fast change. China will have a major competitor, one that doesn't have any cultural barriers to the advancement of the free Human spirit.. ...."

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems  (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it),  Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse),  Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version) 

“… The Future of the Illuminati

Now, I want to tell you something that you didn't expect and something I've reported only one other time. What about all of the money that the Illuminati has? There are trillions and trillions of euro in banks, under their control, waiting. What are they going to do with it and where are they going to use it? It's still here. They're waiting.

This group is waiting for something to happen that they know is going to happen, for they see it coming as much as I do. However, I would like to tell you something that they don't expect. With awareness comes generational shift. Those in charge of this money will not always be elders. The indigos eventually will have it.

They are waiting for something to happen in Africa - the building of a new civilization, a continent that has nothing to unlearn. Once Africa is cured, once it's ready, a new civilization can be created from the ground up. Africans will be ready to learn everything about building a foundation for the most advanced civilization ever and will do it with the most modern and inventive systems available. Eventually, this new continent will even beat the economics of China.

This is the prediction and always has been, and the Illuminati's money will fund it. Did I say the Illuminati will fund it? [Kryon laugh] The Illuminati's money will fund it, but there is a difference from the past, dear ones. The ones who inherit the positions in the Illuminati will be a different consciousness. Listen, they are not suddenly going to be the ones who have the good of everyone in their hearts - hardly. They want to make money, but what they will see instead is a way to make a great deal of money through this investment. In the process, it will automatically help hundreds of thousands, and they will be at the beginning, the foundation, that builds the new Africa. The new African states of unification eventually will create a continent stronger than any of the others, and it will have one currency. The resources alone will dwarf anything in the world. ...”

Bill Gates urges China's wealthiest to give to charity

Businessman makes plea in People's Daily for country to improve bad philanthropic record by investing in the poor

theguardian.com, Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing, Monday 28 April 2014

Bill Gates: 'Returns from investing in poor people are just as great as [returns]
 from investing in the business world.' Photograph: Mehdi Taamallah/AFP/Getty Images

Bill Gates has urged China's extraordinarily wealthy business elite to shed its aversion to philanthropy and donate to the poor, a potent message in one of the world's most economically divided societies.

"Only when we help poor people break away from destitution and illness can the whole world achieve sustainable development," Gates wrote in the People's Daily, a mouthpiece of the country's top leadership. "Investing in poor people requires the involvement of every social strata. I believe that the returns from investing in poor people are just as great as [returns] from investing in the business world, and have even more meaning."

China had 358 billionaires at the end of 2013 – a rise of 41 over the previous year and the second-most of any country in the world, after the US. Yet in terms of charitable giving, it ranks among the world's worst. According to the World Giving Index 2013, an annual survey by the NGO Charities Aid Foundation (pdf) (pdf), China ranked 115 among 135 countries for donating money and last for volunteering.

Income inequality counts among the country's most pressing social ills. According to a 2012 survey by Peking University, families in China's cities and coastal provinces earn significantly more than their rural and inland counterparts. An average Shanghai household, for example, brings in £2,790 a year, while an average family in the inland province Gansu makes less than £1,200.

While handfuls of individuals have profited enormously from China's economic boom, few have shown willing to share their wealth. In 2010, Gates, who runs the $38bn Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the American business magnate Warren Buffet asked 50 of China's richest people to join a charity dinner in Beijing. Many turned down the invitation, reportedly because they were uncomfortable being asked for donations.

Yet the country's philanthropic record is slowly improving. On Friday, Jack Ma and Joe Tsai, co-founders of Alibaba, China's biggest e-commerce company, announced plans to fund a $3bn foundation, the country's largest. The amount represents about 2% of the company's equity, all of it from the founders' shares. According to state media, the foundation will focus on environment, education and healthcare. Yet other details, such as its name and how the money will be distributed, remain unclear.

Ma, China's eighth richest man, stepped down as Alibaba's CEO last year and has since dedicated much of his time to charity efforts. He sits on the Nature Conservancy's board of directors and helps lead kung fu star Jet Li's One Foundation.

"When you register a new foundation in China you need a supervisory agency, so a lot of people have worried that by registering a private foundation they'd be giving up control over their personal wealth," said Anthony Spires, a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who researches China's civil society. "Many of these folks are used to being in charge – they have very clear issues that concern them  … and they don't want the government to tell them how to spend their money."

Spires called the size of the promised foundation "staggering".

"This will be the largest foundation in China, if they really do it," he said. "It's on par with Michael Bloomberg's philanthropy."

Alibaba is preparing a high-profile initial public offering on the New York stock exchange. Analysts expect the company to be valued at more than $100bn, which would make its IPO one of the biggest in history.

"My wife and I had this thought of setting up a personal charitable fund when we started the business," Ma, 49, told the state newswire Xinhua. "We'd like to earn money before we turn 50 years old and do charitable work in our time after 50."

Gates has responded to Ma's announcement, saying that the foundation will "do an immense amount of good, particularly in this remarkable time in the development of philanthropy in China", the newswire reported. Warren Buffet has called the two Alibaba founders "extraordinary leaders in business [who] have now become leaders in philanthropy".

Related Article:

Alibaba founders set up charity fund

Jack Ma. (Photo/Xinhua)

Goldman Sachs charged with fraud by SEC

Reuters, NEW YORK, Fri Apr 16, 2010 11:10am EDT

The new Goldman Sachs Group Inc. global headquarters, also known
 by its address as 200 West Street, is pictured in New York's lower
 Manhattan April 7, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc was charged with fraud on Friday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the structuring and marketing of a debt product tied to subprime mortgages.

The SEC alleged that Goldman structured and marketed a synthetic collateralized debt obligation that hinged on the performance of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities, and which cost investors more than $1 billion.

It alleged that Goldman did not tell investors "vital information" about the CDO, called ABACUS. This included that a major hedge fund, Paulson & Co, was involved in choosing which securities would be part of the portfolio, and had taken a short position against the CDO in a bet its value would fall.

According to the SEC complaint, Paulson & Co paid Goldman $15 million to structure the CDO, which closed on April 26, 2007. Little more than nine months later, 99 percent of the portfolio had been downgraded, the SEC said.

The SEC said Goldman Vice President Fabrice Tourre was principally responsible for creating ABACUS. It also charged him with fraud.

Goldman, Paulson and Tourre were not immediately available for comment.

Shares of Goldman sank $19.39, or 10.5 percent, to $164.88 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

A television at the NYSE showed the effect of fraud charges on Goldman
 Sach’s stock price on on Friday. (AFP Photo/Getty Images)

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5-day Davos forum ends on note of humility

The Jakarta Post, Edith M. Lederer, The Associated Press, Davos | Sun, 01/31/2010 9:51 PM

The world's foremost gathering of business and government leaders wrapped up a five-day meeting Sunday with widespread agreement that a fragile recovery is under way but no consensus on what's going to spur job growth and prevent another global economic meltdown.

In a group of big egos and many power players attending the annual World Economic Forum, there was even some humility and a realization that overcoming the first global financial crisis is uncharted territory.

The gathering of some 2,500 VIPs in this Swiss alpine resort saw much spirited debate on whether more regulation is needed for the financial industry, how to boost sagging global unemployment, and finding ways to ensure the nascent recovery is kept on course through 2010.

The atmosphere of doom and gloom that pervaded last year's forum, which took place at the height of the economic crisis, was replaced this year by a feeling of some satisfaction that a modest recovery is under way but uncertainty about the way forward and how banks should respond.

Deutsche Bank chief Executive Josef Ackermann told an AP-sponsored closing panel that the worst of the financial and economic crisis had been managed "quite successfully" but decision-makers now had a tough choice: "Should we take more risk, be a creative force for growth, or should we focus on security?"

Peter Sands, the CEO of Britain's Standard Chartered Bank, said at the panel that the right balance must be struck "between making a safer banking system and a financial system that can support the sort of dynamism and growth in job creation."

"Get it wrong one way and we risk a new crisis; get it wrong the other way and we'll take the steam out of the recovery and reduce the chances of creating new jobs," he said.

At the same time, Sands said, everyone must have "a degree of humility about what we actually know, and how confident we can be, that the ideas we're going to put in place are going to have the consequences that we thought they were going to have."

At Davos, the pendulum swings between a focus on the economy and other global issues.

The spotlight at past forums has been on celebrity guests like Angelina Jolie and Bono, but this year it fell on the big bankers and government financial regulators.

"It was all economics - and they were all lost," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

In the keynote speech, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a return to ethics and morality in business and gave a broad riposte to free-market capitalism.

Klaus Schwab, the forum's founder, ended the meeting with a call to the business and government leaders to reflect "on values" and social responsibility.

Sarkozy told international bankers and CEOs just what they didn't want to hear: Brace for bonus curbs, tighter banking regulations and new bookkeeping rules. He echoed rallying cries of workers from the United States to Europe and Asia, and hours later, President Barack Obama also called for reforms to Wall Street.

Perhaps the most important meeting was unscheduled. It came Saturday on the sidelines of the forum when government regulators, finance ministers and central bankers from the U.S. and Europe laid out their financial reform plans during a two-hour meeting with bank executives.

Sands called the discussions at this and other meetings "very constructive" but said: "They haven't in a sense solved the issues, but they certainly, I think, pushed them forward."

Ackerman praised the major economic players for expanding their Group of Eight to the Group of 20. He said there should be a Business group of 20 to work alongside them and focus on business issues.

With China and India spurring the global economy, Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Limited, India, a global communications company, predicted that the difference between growth rates between the developing and developed worlds "are increasingly going to become larger."

The result, he told the AP-sponsored panel, is that richer countries will "more aggressively" invest in emerging markets in order to maintain their own growth, which will be "good for the emerging world."

Muhammad Yunus, managing director of the Grameen Bank, which pioneered microcredit, said in an AP interview that "this is a good time to redesign the entire financial system."

"Big guys are not the big sufferers," he said. "Big sufferers are the small guys who lost their jobs, who lost their food, who lost their livelihood."

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Veggie Garden on White House Lawn

Perrmaculture Research Institute, Australia

Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Society, Peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh

We asked for it - a veggie garden on the White House lawn. Could this be true?

ABC News’ Brian Hartman Reports: President Obama’s latest shovel-ready project is close to home — in fact, right in his own yard. In an effort to promote healthy eating, the first family will be planting a vegetable garden right on the White House grounds. - ABC News

The ABC news article says one of the Park Service workers confirmed that the garden will become reality, and went on to state that it will be organised by White House residence staff, not the Park

Service staff that normally maintain the grounds. This infers that Michelle Obama will be in charge of the garden, as she is head of residence staff.

This begs the question, does Michelle Obama read our blog? (well, you can’t help but wonder).

We’ll know in due course - the veggies pulled from the White House turf are either going to be organic (hopefully in the truest sense of the word), or we’ll have a slew of industries proudly proclaiming that White House staff are using their chemicals to ’solve’ any issues they may have along the way.

I like to hold out a little hope though, and the ABC article indicates there may be a valid reason to do so:

As first reported online by food writer Eddie Gehman Kohan, who reports on food issues related to the Obamas, First Lady Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey’s "O" magazine, "We’re … working on a wonderful new garden project."

In the April issue of the magazine, Mrs. Obama tells Winfrey, "We want to use it as a point of education, to talk about health and how delicious it is to eat fresh food, and how you can take that food and make it part of a healthy diet." - ABC News

I’m sure the mainstream media will have their eyes all over this one - so time will tell.

Michelle - if you are reading, I’d like to propose that our own Geoff Lawton come and take you through the design process. He’s worked a lot of unusual locations….

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A Madoff lesson for young investors

McClatchy Newspapers, Sunday, Feb. 08, 2009

Don’t trust someone with your money just because they happen to wear a nice suit.

In light of the stunning collapse of Bernard Madoff’s financial empire, which authorities believe was nothing more than a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, this seems like an excellent time to share this and other investment words of wisdom with young investors who are just beginning to dip their toes in the stock market’s treacherous waters.

And this has hit home: At least seven people or firms with S.C. addresses appeared on a list of several thousand Madoff clients made public last week in a court filing.

Better to learn at an early age that there are a lot of sharks and charlatans masquerading as “advisers” rather than lose a fortune later in life to some phony daddy whiz bang.

Everything and everyone must be challenged — even friends — when it comes to choosing someone who’ll put your money to work.

“Retirement is the furthest thing from most young people’s minds,” said Don Blandin, president and CEO of the nonprofit Investor Protection Trust. “But if they don’t learn about scams and how to avoid unscrupulous con artists, it may remain the furthest thing later in life.”

Here are a few other lessons from the Madoff mess that would benefit any young investor:

• Don’t count on quick gains. I’m a fan of patient, long-term investing.
  
• Don’t put your eggs in one basket. Resist the urge to put too much money into one investment. Spread it around.
  
• Don’t invest if you don’t have the stomach for risk. If an investment causes you to lose sleep, it’s not for you. There are plenty of other choices that can help you make money and weather the storm of financial risk.
  
• Don’t buy what you don’t understand. Know how the investments work.
  
• Don’t wear blinders over your eyes. As bad as the Madoff scam seems, it’s going to get even messier. The lawsuits are starting to roll in, and many interested parties are now playing the blame game. It’s the American way.
  

The lesson here is that investors with skin in the game must take some personal responsibility for their actions. Do some homework. Read the fine print in the investment disclosure statements, use common sense and trust your instincts.

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