Financial Seminars by Dr. Raymond Jewell

Money Talks

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Few individuals derive quite so much pleasure from digging through data as Charles Biderman. He’s the always-opinionated, hyper-watchful numbers hound behind TrimTabs Investment Research, the firm that FORTUNE partnered with to build our Recovery Index.

And though he’s a Harvard Business School grad, Biderman’s insights about how the market moves are more than purely academic. In order to pay back his school loans, he spent the 1970s and 1980s building a career in real estate development until, in 1988, his bank went broke and his loans were called.

Biderman was forced into personal bankruptcy and emerged with key insight: price is a function of liquidity, it has nothing to do with value.

That notion led him to form TrimTabs, which sells proprietary research about the markets, money flows and the economy to investors (currently one-fourth of the biggest hedge funds in the United States are clients, and Goldman Sachs purchased a minority stake in the company last year).

Candid and colorful in conversation, Biderman’s exhaustive research has produced some alarmingly simple findings.

For instance: “When companies are net buyers of stock, the market goes up, when they’re net sellers the market goes down,” he says. Indeed, one of his favorite metrics to watch is the number of stock buybacks by corporations, which he says start climbing at the trough of every downturn (something, as we note in our Recovery Index, that hasn’t happened yet.)

Biderman talked to FORTUNE’s Lee Clifford about what the Recovery Index is showing now, the one move Obama needs to make, and when he thinks the stock market will finally hit bottom.

Fortune: Give us your take on the health of the overall economy right now.

Biderman: Things are getting worse. The job market continues to contract. Incomes keep declining, even after adjusting for the latest round of tax credits. We don’t see any slowdown in the rate of declines in incomes or job losses. There’s no end in sight.

I’ve been looking at the numbers, comparing the three-week Easter season this year versus last year. Incomes are down 10%. We haven’t seen anything like that for decades.

Fortune: How do you view the policy responses from Washington so far?

Biderman: The only thing that’s helping anybody right now is the $400 per person [$800 per couple] tax cut. That’s helping somewhat. But I’m a little cynical. My feeling is that the divine purpose of the political system is to raise money for politicians so they can get reelected.

The banks that are in trouble have paid Congress a lot of money over the years. You and I don’t pay anything to the congressman. What we would recommend is that instead of focusing on getting the banks to lend, you’ve got to focus on giving wage earners more money.

Fortune: You don’t believe any of the recent stock market rallies have been for real. Explain.

Biderman: Well, what you’ve had recently is $2 billion a week in tax refunds that started to go out during the first in week February and will continue through the third week in May. I suspect that’s part of the reason for the stock market rally, but that’s only temporary.

In March there was a little revival in refinancing, but again, I think the number of people who are in a position to take advantage of refinancings right now is pretty small. The glimmers of hope were temporary and now we see that things are declining again.

Fortune: Talk about what you’re seeing in terms of the housing market.

Biderman: If we look at homes, while the number of foreclosures seems to be dropping somewhat, the notices of default are at record levels and so we expect the foreclosures to spike up again too. If you look at what’s really going on, right after the ‘peak’ in foreclosures in September, there was a moratorium on foreclosures, but that ended in March. Once those pick up again, it’s going to be a new down leg in the real estate market.

Fortune: If there’s one policy you could implement now to help fix the economy, what would it be?

Biderman: If we cut withholding rates by 15%, and we did it for three years, it would be $300 billion a year in lower taxes, which is less than it costs to bail out some of these institutions. But we’re not doing that, so instead you’re creating a situation where more and more consumers are going to be defaulting on their debts. Forget new lending, the real problem for banks is going to be collecting on all these loans, and the problems are going to be way beyond sub prime.

Fortune: In your view, what would be the single best sign that we’ve hit bottom?

Biderman: That foreclosures dry up. That’ll be a sign that household wealth has stabilized. Things aren’t going to hit bottom until the real estate market bottoms, and we work through all the problem homes, and people can afford the homes they’re in. Then we can grow from there.

Fortune: And when do you think that might be?

Biderman: At least another year. We probably won’t see a bottom till sometime in 2010. We’re still in retreat.

Fortune: You’ve long taken issue with the way the government collects some economic data. What bothers you most?

Biderman: Just look at how they track income and jobs. When everybody gets paid, the amount of money withheld goes to the government. From that you could tell who had jobs and how much they’re making. But instead of tracking this in aggregate and reporting it in real time, the Bureau of Economic Analysis uses historic data that’s 5 to 7 months old and based on state unemployment data to come up with estimate of current income and job gains or losses. Then of course they always go back and revise the number. But they never have a press release about the revisions. What’s equally annoying is that nobody’s taking the time to say, ‘this is crazy!’

The economy is crazy indeed, as seen from the article listed above on CNN Money.  It goes without saying that people are dazed and confused in the current trends of the economy.  It is clear that conditions are worsening, even though the major news sources are telling the opposite.

What can you do as an average American citizen to learn the real truth about money, investing, financial institutions, and is there a way to recover lost wealth, and income in this time of economic uncertainty?

Money Talks Offers Education and Solutions

Money Talks, the program set into motion by Dr. Raymond Jewell, is answering the tough questions concerning the economy.  He is in touch with the current economic trends and knows that average people are hurting today.  His goal is to bring Money Talks to one milllion people over the next three year period.

Money Talks offers real people information, education, mentoring and other intuitive and creative ideas in dealing effectively with money issues.  Money Talks begins the process back to economic wholeness.  This will not happen overnight.  One must be aware that becoming pro active, and taking responsibility to view the Money Talks site is important, but its more important to signup for all the resources that are available.

Money Talks receives many hits over a week long period, and for the people who are receiving the timely newsletter presentations are getting a first hand look at how they can educate themselves back into wholeness, under the guidance of Dr. Jewell.

Is your financial future worth the effort?

Is your situation able to be rectified over the coming months?

Are you willing to stand and signup for the newsletters provided?

Are you willing to become educated in the exact ways that you are losing money today from the financial institutions?

If you answer yes to these questions, then viewing the Money Talks site, is definitely worth your time and effort.

Money Talks and the Economy

Money Talks and the Economy

The forgettable first half of 2008 is stumbling to a close. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that American employers axed 49,000 jobs in May, the fifth straight month of job losses—an event that signals a recession sure as the glittery ball dropping on Times Square augurs a New Year. The report, which inspired a 394-point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Friday, was the latest in a run of bad news. Auto sales, the largest retailing sector in the U.S., were off 10.7 percent in May from the year before. And housing? Ugh. Nationwide, according to the Case-Shiller Index, home prices in the first quarter fell 14 percent.

Yet hope springs eternal that the second half will be better than the first. Economists polled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in May believe the economy will grow at an annual rate of 1.7 percent and 1.8 percent in the third and fourth quarters, respectively. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, tells NEWSWEEK that “home sales and prices in most of the country will improve during the second half of 2008.” (Yun is the Little Orphan Annie of forecasters. He’s always sure the sun will come out tomorrow.) Last month, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said, “We expect to see a faster pace of economic growth before the end of the year.”

The cause for optimism: the U.S. has called in the economic cavalry, which has responded in textbook fashion. The Federal Reserve has aggressively cut interest rates, bringing the Federal Funds rate down from 5.25 percent last September to 2 percent. Earlier this spring, Congress and President Bush, in a rare moment of bipartisan accord, passed a stimulus package, which will shove nearly $100 billion into the pockets of American consumers by mid-July.

But this downturn is likely to last longer than the eight-month-long recession of 2001. While the U.S. financial system processes popped stock bubbles quickly, it has always taken longer to hack through the overhang of bad debt. The head winds that drove the economy into this dead calm— a housing and credit crisis, and rising energy and food prices—have strengthened rather than let up in recent months. To aggravate matters, the twin crises that dominate the financial news—a credit crunch and the global commodity boom—are blunting the stimulus efforts. As a result, the consumer-driven economy may not bounce back as rapidly as it did in the fraught months after 9/11.

As it seeks to regain its footing in the second half, the U.S. economy faces two significant obstacles, neither of which was evident in 2001. The first is entirely homegrown: the self-inflicted wounds of the promiscuous extension and abuse of credit in the housing and financial sectors. The second is a global phenomenon that has comparatively little to do with American behavior: rampant inflation in commodities such as oil, food and steel. These trends have conspired to inflict genuine economic pain and deflate consumer confidence. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index in May slumped to a 16-year low.

While the treatment of the current malaise has been essentially identical to the reaction to the 2001 slump—aggressive Federal Reserve rate cuts and tax rebates—the symptoms are quite different. In 2001, an implosion in the technology sector and a slump in business investment pushed the economy over the edge. Even though some 3 million jobs were shed between 2001 and 2003, consumers soldiered on through the downturn. “We had a massive reduction in both long- and short-term interest rates, which set off the housing and consumption boom,” says Ian Morris, chief U.S. economist at HSBC. (Remember zero-percent car loans?) This time, it’s the opposite. While businesses—especially those that export—are holding up, the economy is being dragged down by the cement shoes of a freaked-out consumer and a punk housing market.

The difficulties today start—as they began last year—with housing and housing-related credit. Last Thursday, the Mortgage Bankers Association quarterly report showed that the percentage of mortgage borrowers behind on their payments—6.35 percent—was the highest since the MBA began tracking the number in 1979. It’s not just subprime. In the first quarter of 2008, 36 percent of all foreclosures initiated were on prime adjustable-rate mortgages in California. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, says the decline in home prices has slashed $2.5 trillion from household wealth, or about $25,000 per homeowner. The fall has also removed an important source of support for consumer spending, as Americans who grew accustomed to borrowing against rising home equity to finance car purchases or vacations now find themselves bereft. Banks are extricating themselves from the home-equity-line-of-credit business in the same way college students get themselves out of relationships gone bad: abruptly. Judi Froning, a second-grade teacher in San Diego, was surprised last week when she received a letter from Chase informing her that it was terminating her untapped HELOC. “In the light of declining home values, they said they are stopping, effective May 31, any draw on my line of credit,” she says.

Despite repeated claims that the damage has been contained, the banks that recklessly financed the housing boom—and then traded mortgage debt even more recklessly—are still cleaning up the mess. But it turns out (surprise!) the same sort of clouded judgment led banks to excesses in commercial lending, and in loans to private-equity firms. The battered financial system, which has raised tens of billions of dollars on onerous terms from new investors to shore up balance sheets, is still likely to suffer more pain from the popped credit bubble, said Bruce Wasserstein, the CEO of the investment bank Lazard, speaking at a New York breakfast. “The harm will radiate for another year.” The latest victim: Wachovia CEO G. Thompson Kennedy, cashiered after the North Carolina-based bank suffered a string of losses. Next up: write-offs for bad credit-card and commercial real-estate debt. After a serene period between 2004 and ‘07 in which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. went without a single bank failure, four have gone under so far this year. FDIC chairperson Sheila Bair warned of the “possibility that future failures could include institutions of greater size than we have seen in the recent past.” In preparation, the agency has brought staffers out of retirement.

Money Talks The Solution

Now, after seeing the report from Newsweek above, there is good news on the horizon. Money Talks is designed to assist, mentor, inform and educate you in the ways that will help you protect yourself in this economy. Money Talks is a no-nonsense business program, designed by Dr. Raymond Jewell, that is making huge statements towards telling people the solutions to their money and financial problems.

Money Talks is free to join. The Money Talks Newsletter comes loaded with massive amount of information that you can use to help you begin to understand more fully, the ins and outs of financial institutions, government and will unlock the mystery surrounding the little known substance of wealth recovery.

Now is the perfect time to view the Money Talks site. With all the doom and gloom in the world of economic news, there is a way out of the jungle. Money Talks will begin the process, BUT, only if you choose to get the information provided. We can only help, if you are willing to become proactive in your approach to your particular financial position.  Money Talks is for anyone seeking knowledge and insight into solving their financial plight.
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Dr. Raymond Jewell-Senior Economist
Money Talks
Financial Freedom Radio

In talking about money and finances, it would be noteworthy to look deeper into the aspect of money, to evaluate its importance in the mindset of individuals.  There are two pervasive features that come more clearly into focus when money talks appears.

1.  You have enough money to do the things you wish, buy the items you require and are basically financially sound for the future.

2.  You struggle and strain to make ends meet.  You work increasingly longer hours, perhaps at more than one job, but honestly, you can just never break the glass ceiling on having enough money, in your own mind, to live without stress and be comfortable in your setting.

For those of you who fall into category one, you obviously have taken time, and made the effort to understand how to make money, but more importantly, how to keep the money that you make.  You are financially sound, no matter what the current economic trends happen to be.  You are to be commended that you are definitely in the top 10 percent of your game, and I recommend that you keep doing exactly what it is that you do, in order to maintain that money flow.

For the people in the second group (which are most of us), you need to do some serious introspection into the problems of lack.  Its a fact that lack is more mindset, than it is reality.  If you have the proper mindset about money and finances, you will inevitably come out the winner.  Conversely, if you have the wrong mindset, your outcome will come out exactly as you are planning it within your own mind.

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