Bank Balance Quotes

Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue's hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes. What do you want, Adam? To feel awake when my eyes are open.

Don't do it! Stay away from your potential. You'll mess it up, it's potential, leave it. Anyway, it's like your bank balance - you always have a lot less than you think.

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

Life is indeed colourful. We can feel in the pink one day, with our bank balances comfortably in the black, and the grass seemingly no greener on the other side of the fence. Then out of the blue, something tiresome happens that makes us see red, turn ashen white, even purple with rage. Maybe controlling our varying emotions is just 'colour management' by another name.

Right now my life has an expiration date determined by my bank balance. Can I find something before my time is up?

When we see a good-looking woman with a not-so-good-looking man, we assume that the man must have a good bank balance. When we see a good-looking man with a not-so-good-looking woman, we assume that she must be good in bed.

Imagine there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to used during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course? Each of us has such a bank, it's name is time. Every morning, it credits you 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off at a lost, whatever of this you failed to invest to a good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no over draft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no drawing against "tomorrow". You must live in the present on today's deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and health. The clock is running. Make the most of today.

Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure: my mind was absorbed with more immediate concerns, such as the exact balance of my bank account, who I owed how much, and whether there was anything in my room I could sell for ten or twenty dollars.

Childhood is the writer’s bank balance.

Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost.

So I didn't adopt Homer because he was cute and little and sweet, or because he was helpless and needed me. I adopted him because when you think you see something so fundamentally worthwhile in someone else, you don't look for the reasons - like bad timing or a negative bank balance - that might keep it out of your life. You commit to being strong enough to build your life around it, no matter what. In doing so, you begin to become the thing you admire.

A man’s bank balance is the new penis size.

There’s a correlation between the number of digits on a man’s bank balance, and, the number of things that his woman is willing to forgive him for.

There is much more to wealth than simply a bank account with many zeros. A well-balanced, whole life is made up of wealth and success that comes from many facets; family, friends, work, faith, it is the complete person who works on each of these areas and creates the whole,

Nobody on their death bed ever worried about their bank balance.

Two kinds of people have many friends, one with bank balance and other with boldness.

I killed little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I reasoned, I ought to redress the balance at least slightly. My cousin was simply the easiest and most obvious target.

Yes, facts were necessary. But frankly, anyone could be trained to collect a bloodstain or find a hair. Or an affair. Or a bank balance that didn’t balance. But feelings? Only the bravest wandered into that fiery realm.

I keep forgetting your IQ is higher than my bank balance.” “That’s not saying much.

Daydreams of wealth or women must have given Carolo that faraway look which never left him; sad and silent, he contemplated huge bank balances and voluptuous revels.

We do not go to bed in single pairs; even if we choose not to refer to them, we still drag there with us the cultural impedimenta of our social class, our parents' lives, our bank balances, our sexual and emotional expectations, our whole biographies / all the bits and pieces of our unique existences.

Cliché: "The MBA changed my life." What it really means: "A fantastic career, a great social life and a healthy bank balance...three of the things I had before I started the program.

We don't want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his "courage to be" from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.

You should stay away from your potential. I mean, that is something you should leave absolutely alone! You’ll mess it up! It’s potential, leave it! And anyway, it’s like your bank balance, you know – you always have much less than you think. Leave it as the locked door within yourself and then at least, in your mind, the interior will always be palatial. Wonderful gleaming marble floors, brocaded drapes. Mullioned windows, covered in mullions, whatever they are. Flamingos serving drinks. Pianos shooting out canapés into the mouths of elegant men and women who are exchanging witticisms… “Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was in BudaPESHT with Binky… We were trying to steal a goose from the casino, muahahaha…” But it won’t be like that. You don’t want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.

under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth... The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit... In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation

She smiled and squeezed his hand. “I swear I don’t know what to do with you, Steele. You are forever keeping me off balance. Just about the time I think I have you figured out, you do something that completely changes everything.” “Good,” he said in a smug tone. “I’d hate to think I was becoming predictable.

There's no doubt you balance me, Maren. I have fun when I'm with you and you make me laugh. You give that to me. That makes you very special and what you offer me very precious.

Success is subjective. Your dream bank balance could be someone else’s nightmare.

In some cases, people with a body (whose size) they did not long for are victims of having a bank balance (whose size) they longed for.

There really is no correlation between age and one’s bank balance. I’ve met wealthy boys and broke men.

If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.

The bank balance was Noel Constant’s share in the estate of his anarchist father. The estate had consisted principally of Government bonds.

JOY CHOSE YOU Joy does not arrive with a fanfare on a red carpet strewn with the flowers of a perfect life joy sneaks in as you pour a cup of coffee watching the sun hit your favourite tree just right and you usher joy away because you are not ready for her your house is not as it should be for such a distinguished guest but joy, you see cares nothing for your messy home or your bank balance or your waistline joy is supposed to slither through the cracks of your imperfect life that’s how joy works you cannot truly invite her you can only be ready when she appears and hug her with meaning because in this very moment joy chose you.

I have long believed the city, the country, indeed the world at large to be run by precisely the wrong kind of people. From the government to the great financial institutions, the peerage to the police force, our lives are controlled without exception by the stupid and greedy, the venal, the rapacious and the undeservedly rich. How much more comfortable would it be if the rulers of the world were not the cognoscenti of the bank balance, the ballot box, the offshore account, but were drawn instead from the ranks of the everyday - honest, kind, stout-hearted, commonplace folk.

My weight is a bit like the state of my bank account; if I don't check the balance I can't get upset.

Do you want a revolution in science? Do what businesspeople do when they want a technological revolution: Just change the rules a bit. Let in a few revolutionaries. Make the hierarchy a bit flatter, to give the young people more scope and freedom. Create some opportunities for high-risk/high-payoff people, so as to balance the huge investment you made in low-risk, incremental science. The technology companies and investment banks use this strategy. Why not try it in academia? The payoff could be discovering how the universe works.

I love your personality," I said with wide eyes and an open smile. I had used this look before when a bank teller at Wells Fargo had threatened to put a ten-day hold on a check from my father because my average balance was $3.56.

It’s said that sport is the civilised society’s substitute for war, and also that the games we play as children are designed to prepare us for the realities of adult life. Certainly it’s true that my brother thrived in the capitalist kindergarten of the Monopoly board, developing a set of ruthless strategies whose success is reflected in his bank balance even to this day. I, on the other hand, can still be undone by the kind of ridiculous sentimentality that would see me sacrifice anything, anything, in order to have the three matching red-headed cards of Fleet Street, Trafalgar Square and The Strand sitting tidily together on my side of the board.

He advised that I could invest in stocks to make money. Given that I have a negative balance, that was where the conversation stopped.

Theirs is a civilization of deprivation; ours of finely balanced satisfaction ever teetering on the brink of excess.

When a man's bank balance becomes too small, his woman flees. For a man to do the same, his woman's body — or vagina — has to do the opposite.

We are sometimes humbled by the realization that, unlike their house, someone’s bank balance or paycheck is bigger than ours.

For a woman to see a man beyond his bank balance, he has to be rich first. Logic.

This was a woman who lunched in fancy restaurants, filtered suitors based on their bank balances, and who looked at women like me as snacks.

You must entice them, seduce them and captivate them. Love and lust are the bait, which will become, the snare around their necks and the drain on their bank balance. Vivian instructed.

Who am I? is not a question about your job or bank balance. Don’t be satisfied with rational or formal answers. Ask yourself seriously and honestly, again and again, and, sooner or later, you’ll hear the voice of your soul. The true answer will come to you, breaking through the thick curtain of your ego, which is made up of your name, job, personality, and similar things.

If Flynn hadn't known his older brother for the addicted, lying sack of shit he was, he might have believed the pain he saw in that gaze, might have trusted that Connor had finally seen the error of his ways and was going to change his life and step out of their father's shadow. But Connor usually only had an epiphany if it got him laid, increased his bank balance, or severely pissed off Rupert.

I have never—and I mean ever—had a real desire to let otherwise-unaccounted-for money just chill in my bank account unmolested for more than maybe a week and a half. I barely have the willpower to leave other people’s money alone for the short time it’s in my custody. Money that isn’t earmarked for some pressing (transportation/pharmaceutical/credit card balance) need?! Why, yes, I do need fourteen nearly identical blushes, thank you.

Hey, baby, it’s me. Your shithead of a husband.” He spoke and caressed her lifeless hand. Wayne wanted to shake her, do anything to wake her up. One tear fell from his eye and the ice around his heart smashed to smithereens. With Lily in his life, he had some semblance of control over his emotions. The thought of losing her and never seeing her smile, or to even hear her sing, was breaking him more than any gold digger could his bank balance.

When I hear health professionals suggesting that you shouldn't worry about the balance of calories in versus calories out, but rather eat clean and follow your hunger instincts, well, I really just want to pinch their heads off. That's like a millionaire suggesting that instead of worrying about that's in your bank account, just listen to your shopping instincts and buy high-quality goods . . . weight loss is not magic. To a great extent, it's accounting.

Yes, the pursuit of love and the pursuit of wealth have much in common. Both have the potential to inspire, motivate, uplift and kill. But whereas achieving a massive bank balance demonstrably attracts fine physical specimens desperate to give their love in exchange, achieving love tends to do the opposite. It dampens the fire in the steam furnace of ambition, robbing of essential propulsion an already fraught upriver journey to the heart of financial success.

These coins are not very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have money suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said he had "swamped the bank, had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head of the firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the change." I bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling myself. I am not proud on account of having so much money, though. I care nothing for wealth.

Debt is always negative, no matter how positively you try to look at it. The “minus” sign in front of your bank balance is a dead giveaway, despite what you might think about leveraging or whatever. It’s even worse when it’s a credit card or a student loan, and you can’t even remember what you’ve bought or learned with it. Sure, the minimum repayments will eventually cancel it out, but by that time you will most likely have dentures and be peeing anywhere you damn well please.

Barney Frank wanted to know where the Fed was going to get the $85 billion to lend to AIG. I didn’t think this was the time to explain the mechanics of creating bank reserves. I said, “We have $800 billion,” referring to the pre-crisis size of the Fed’s balance sheet. Barney looked stunned. He didn’t see why the Fed should have that kind of money at its disposal.

I smack into him as if shoved from behind. He doesn't budge, not an inch. Just holds my shoulders and waits. Maybe he's waiting for me to find my balance. Maybe he's waiting for me to gather my pride. I hope he's got all day. I hear people passing on the boardwalk and imagine them staring. Best-case scenario, they think I know this guy, that we're hugging. Worst-case scenario, they saw me totter like an intoxicated walrus into this complete stranger because I was looking down for a place to park our beach stuff. Either way, he knows what happened. He knows why my cheek is plastered to his bare chest. And there is definite humiliation waiting when I get around to looking up at him. Options skim through my head like a flip book. Option One: Run away as fast as my dollar-store flip flops can take me. Thing is, tripping over them is partly responsible for my current dilemma. In fact, one of them is missing, probably caught in a crack of the boardwalk. I'm getting Cinderella didn't feel this foolish, but then again, Cinderella wasn't as clumsy as an intoxicated walrus. Option two: Pretend I've fainted. Go limp and everything. Drool, even. But I know this won't work because my eyes flutter too much to fake it, and besides, people don't blush while unconscious. Option Three: Pray for a lightning bolt. A deadly one that you feel in advance because the air gets all atingle and your skin crawls-or so the science books say. It might kill us both, but really, he should have been paying more attention to me when he saw that I wasn't paying attention at all. For a shaved second, I think my prayers are answered because I go get tingly all over; goose bumps sprout everywhere, and my pulse feels like electricity. Then I realize, it's coming from my shoulders. From his hands. Option Last: For the love of God, peel my cheek off his chest and apologize for the casual assault. Then hobble away on my one flip-flop before I faint. With my luck, the lightning would only maim me, and he would feel obligated to carry me somewhere anyway. Also, do it now. I ease away from him and peer up. The fire on my cheeks has nothing to do with the fact that it's sweaty-eight degrees in the Florida sun and everything to do with the fact that I just tripped into the most attractive guy on the planet. Fan-flipping-tastic. "Are-are you all right?" he says, incredulous. I think I can see the shape of my cheek indented on his chest. I nod. "I'm fine. I'm used to it. Sorry." I shrug off his hands when he doesn't let go. The tingling stays behind, as if he left some of himself on me. "Jeez, Emma, are you okay?" Chloe calls from behind. The calm fwopping of my best friend's sandals suggests she's not as concerned as she sounds. Track star that she is, she would already be at my side if she thought I was hurt. I groan and face her, not surprised that she's grinning wide as the equator. She holds out my flip-flop, which I try not to snatch from her hand. "I'm fine. Everybody's fine," I say. I turn back to the guy, who seems to get more gorgeous by the second. "You're fine, right? No broken bones or anything?" He blinks, gives a slight nod. Chloe setts her surfboard against the rail of the boardwalk and extends her hand to him. He accepts it without taking his eyes off me. "I'm Chloe and this is Emma," she says. "We usually bring her helmet with us, but we left it back in the hotel room this time.

Anyone who’s ever gone to the gym knows that the results aren’t immediate. You don’t spend thirty minutes on the treadmill and look like a new person. But that doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t working. You’re making progress. With each exercise, each step, each movement, each action, you get a little better, a little closer. Until one day you look in the mirror and think, “Wow!” It’s the same thing with your business or your health, or your career or your relationships. Even when you don’t see anything happening, it is. Even when you’re not quite hitting the mark, you’re making progress. Until one day you look at your bank balance or your new job or your children or your new house and think, “Wow!” That’s why you have to keep going. Relentlessly.

Was he so ignorant of human nature as not to know that a comfortable bank balance and an appreciation of good food and tobacco and well-cut clothes and jewels can go perfectly well in practice, in normal beings, with the keenest sensibility to the spiritualities of art?

Bagpipe Music' It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw, All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow. Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python, Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison. John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa, Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker, Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey, Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty. It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky, All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi. Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather, Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna. It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture, All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture. The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober, Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over. Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion, Said to the midwife 'Take it away; I'm through with overproduction'. It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh, All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby. Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage, Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage. His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish, Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish. It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible, All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle. It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium, It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums, It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections, Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension. It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet; Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit. The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever, But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

I think of two landscapes- one outside the self, the other within. The external landscape is the one we see-not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology… If you walk up, say, a dry arroyo in the Sonoran Desert you will feel a mounding and rolling of sand and silt beneath your foot that is distinctive. You will anticipate the crumbling of the sedimentary earth in the arroyo bank as your hand reaches out, and in that tangible evidence you will sense the history of water in the region. Perhaps a black-throated sparrow lands in a paloverde bush… the smell of the creosote bush….all elements of the land, and what I mean by “the landscape.” The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape. Relationships in the exterior landscape include those that are named and discernible, such as the nitrogen cycle, or a vertical sequence of Ordovician limestone, and others that are uncodified or ineffable, such as winter light falling on a particular kind of granite, or the effect of humidity on the frequency of a blackpoll warbler’s burst of song….the shape and character of these relationships in a person’s thinking, I believe, are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature- the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf, are known. These thoughts are arranged, further, according to the thread of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual development. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes. Among the Navajo, the land is thought to exhibit sacred order…each individual undertakes to order his interior landscape according to the exterior landscape. To succeed in this means to achieve a balanced state of mental health…Among the various sung ceremonies of this people-Enemyway, Coyoteway, Uglyway- there is one called Beautyway. It is, in part, a spiritual invocation of the order of the exterior universe, that irreducible, holy complexity that manifests itself as all things changing through time (a Navajo definition of beauty).

I was an incurious student that semester. Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure: my mind was absorbed with more immediate concerns, such as the exact balance of my bank account, who I owed how much, and whether there was anything in my room I could sell for ten or twenty dollars.

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money. Money gets rid of the inconveniences of barter. But it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth, because it will do you no good to eat it or wear it for clothing. Money is more or less static, for gold, silver, strong paper, or a bank balance can “stay put” for a long time. But real wealth, such as food, is perishable. Thus a community may possess all the gold in the world, but if it does not farm its crops it will starve.

Each one of us has such a bank. It's called TIME. Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. And every night it writes off as lost whatever you have failed to invest wisely. It carries no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. If you fail to use the day's deposit, the loss is yours.

The challenges of sticking to a plan, the inability to resist a new leather jacket or a new project, the forgetfulness (the car registration, making a phone call, paying a bill) and the cognitive slips (the misestimated bank account balance, the mishandled invitation) all happen because of a shortage of bandwidth. There is one particularly important consequence: it further perpetuates scarcity. It was not a coincidence that Sendhil and Shawn fell into a trap and stayed there. Scarcity creates its own trap.

...[S]o many people look only to their bank balance for peace or to fellow human beings for models to follow. Clinicians, academicians, and politicians are often put to a test of faith. In pursuit of their goals, will their religion show or will it be hidden? Are they tied back to God or to man? I had such a test decades ago when one of my medical faculty colleagues chastised me for failing to separate my professional knowledge from my religious convictions. He demanded that I not combine the two. How could I do that? Truth is truth! It is not divisible, and any part of it cannot be set aside. Whether truth emerges from a scientific laboratory or through revelation, all truth emanates from God.

I GREW UP IN THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS BUT THESE DAYS, I LIVE IN THE STATE OF CONSTANT ANXIETY. Delilah Sinclair, checking her bank account balance.

Sometimes, it is not the money in your bank account that solves your problem, but the wisdom in your head.

Every bad experience is a source of unhappiness. Yet the intensity of suffering can be controlled. Just like a person who has a million-dollar bank balance is likely to get less disturbed due to loss of a few dollars, you too can easily overcome some bad incidents in your life, without losing much joy, provided you already have a great amount of happiness in your life.

Crayfish,” I said. I dumped out a tin of water. “Really?” I nodded. “Big ones?” “Not these. You can find them, though.” “Can I see?” She dropped down off the bank just like a boy would, not sitting first, just putting her left hand to the ground and vaulting the three-foot drop to the first big stone in the line that led zigzag across the water. She studied the line a moment and then crossed to the Rock. I was impressed. She had no hesitation and her balance was perfect. I made room for her. There was suddenly this fine clean smell sitting next to me. Her eyes were green. She looked around. To all of us back then the Rock was something special. It sat smack in the middle of the deepest part of the brook, the water running clear and fast around it.

In October, in executive session in New York City, Chief Frank Borrell was called to testify and among other things explain how he came by his rich bank account balance—about eighty thousand; he couldn’t recall exactly—on a police chief’s salary. Borrell claimed it was income from his concessions at Palisades Amusement Park. And even after the committee had heard vast amounts of testimony about Frank Erickson’s illegal bookmaking network in Cliffside Park, Borrell insisted, “I can’t say there is any gambling in Cliffside,” and that he had never had to make a gambling arrest in his town.

Months after leaving office, he wrote to the Bank of the United States and admitted that he did not know his account balance because he had lost his bank book—this from the man who had created the bank.

Stories of law violations are weighed on a different set of scales in the Black mind than in the white. Petty crimes embarrass the community and many people wistfully wonder why Negroes don't rob more banks, embezzle more funds and employ graft in the unions. “We are the victims of the world's most comprehensive robbery. Life demands a balance. It's all right if we do a little robbing now.” This belief appeals particularly to one who is unable to compete legally with his fellow citizens.

The moment Salomon Brothers demonstrated the potential gains to be had from turning an investment bank into a public corporation and leveraging its balance sheet with exotic risks, the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted, from trust to blind faith.

When foreign military spending [bombing Korea and Vietnam] forced the U.S. balance of payments into deficit and drove the United States off gold in 1971, central banks were left without the traditional asset used to settle payments imbalances. The alternative by default was to invest their subsequent payments inflows in U.S. Treasury bonds, as if these still were “as good as gold.” Central banks have been holding some $4 trillion of these bonds in their international reserves for the past few years — and these loans have financed most of the U.S. Government’s domestic budget deficits for over three decades. Given the fact that about half of U.S. Government discretionary spending is for military operations — including more than 750 foreign military bases and increasingly expensive operations in the oil-producing and transporting countries — the international financial system is organized in a way that finances the Pentagon, along with U.S. buyouts of foreign assets expected to yield much more than the Treasury bonds that foreign central banks hold.

Costco is well positioned to buck the ugly trends in retail for a number of reasons, including 11 billion of them sitting in its bank account. Honeywell’s $15 billion will likely carry it into a post-corona land of milk and honey. Johnson & Johnson has nearly $20 billion—it’s not going anywhere. Every one of these companies will have their pick of the assets and customers left behind when their weaker competitors shut down. In every category, there will be more concentration of power in the two or three companies with the strongest balance sheets.

The Marine Corps assumes maximum ignorance from its enlisted folks. It assumes that no one taught you anything about physical fitness, personal hygiene, or personal finances. I took mandatory classes about balancing a checkbook, saving, and investing. When I came home from boot camp with my fifteen-hundred-dollar earnings deposited in a mediocre regional bank, a senior enlisted marine drove me to Navy Federal—a respected credit union—and had me open an account. When I caught strep throat and tried to tough it out, my commanding officer noticed and ordered me to the doctor. We

When I describe for my far-away friends the Northwest’s subtle shades of weather — from gloaming skies of ‘high-gray’ to ‘low-gray’ with violet streaks like the water’s delicate aura — they wonder if my brain and body have, indeed, become water-logged. Yet still, I find myself praising the solace and privacy of fine, silver drizzle, the comforting cloaks of salt, mold, moss, and fog, the secretive shelter of cedar and clouds. Whether it’s in the Florida Keys, along the rocky Maine coast, within the Gulf of Mexico’s warm curves, on the brave Outer Banks; or, for those who nestle near inland seas, such as the brine-steeped Great Salk Lake or the Midwest’s Great Lakes — water is alive and in relationship with those of us who are blessed with such a world-shaping, yet abiding, intimate ally. Every day I am moved by the double life of water — her power and her humility. But most of all, I am grateful for the partnership of this great body of inland sea. Living by water, I am never alone. Just as water has sculpted soil and canyon, it also molds my own living space, and every story I tell. …Living by water restores my sense of balance and natural rhythm — the ebb and flow of high tides and low tides, so like the rise and fall of everyday life. Wind, water, waves are not simply a backdrop to my life, they are steady companions. And that is the grace, the gift of inviting nature to live inside my home. Like a Chambered Nautilus I spin out my days, drifting and dreaming, nurtured by marine mists, like another bright shell on the beach, balancing on the back of a greater body.

Alexander's succeeding campaigns, until he reached the borders of India, were militarily a 'mopping up' of the Persian empire, while politically the consolidation of his own. He forced the Uxian defile and the Persian 'Gates' by an indirect approach, and when he was confronted on the Hydaspes by Porus, he produced a masterpiece of indirectness which showed the ripening of his own strategical powers. By laying in stores of corn, and by distributing his army widely along the western bank, he mystified his opponent as to his intentions. Repeated noisy marches and counter-marches of Alexander's cavalry first kept Porus on tenterhooks, and then, through repetition, dulled his reaction. Having thus fixed Porus to a definite and static position, Alexander left the bulk of his army opposite it, and himself with a picked force made a night crossing eighteen miles upstream. By the surprise of this indirect approach he dislocated the mental and moral balance of Porus, as well as the moral and physical balance of this army. In the ensuing battle Alexander, with a fraction of his own army, was enabled to defeat almost the whole of his enemy's. If this preliminary dislocation had not occurred there would have been no justification, either in theory or in fact, for Alexander's exposure of an isolated fraction to the risk of defeat in detail.

I know what is wrong. You havn't decided what you want.' She'd underlined this many times. 'Terribly important to draw up a balance sheet every now and then, debits and credits. Decide what's important, what's worth fighting for. Don't drift, ever. Decide then act. If you fail well at least you tried. Don't know what you want so can't advise you how to get it.

The moment Salomon Brothers demonstrated the potential gains to be had from turning an investment bank into a public corporation and leveraging its balance sheet with exotic risks, the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted, from trust to blind faith. No investment bank owned by its employees would have leveraged itself 35:1, or bought and held $50 billion in mezzanine CDOs.

Wealthy is not about accumulating money into banks/pockets, not about having multi-properties to count of the atmospheric knowns, "it is when you make others sorrounding you to live a mult - health, happier and balanced life converging to the wealth you have indeed reflecting your available resources that enhences their appreciative earnings". (Getting and Giving). Use your wealth to enrich others indeed.

In 1980 the Latin American nations collectively were receiving from their external creditors—major banks, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank—about $11 billion more than they were losing in capital transfers back to wealthy-nation interests. But by 1985 these nations would be losing $35 billion more a year in capital transfers to North America and Europe than they received in loans and investments.41

In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automated teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. The system hardware, the mainframe sitting in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed. A deranged person was escorted from the bank by two armed guards. The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now.

have never—and I mean ever—had a real desire to let otherwise-unaccounted-for money just chill in my bank account unmolested for more than maybe a week and a half. I barely have the willpower to leave other people’s money alone for the short time it’s in my custody. Money that isn’t earmarked for some pressing (transportation/pharmaceutical/credit card balance) need?! Why, yes, I do need fourteen nearly identical blushes, thank you. When

A pine cone cannot fall from a tree unless God is involved. A bumblebee cannot pollenate a flower or sting your arm apart from the will of God. Money cannot enter or exit your bank account apart from the sovereignty of God. Little Ernest cannot be born or be buried in that grave just a half-mile from my house apart from God’s will. Legislation cannot be passed in this country or in any other apart from God’s sovereignty. You hold this book in your hands because God sovereignly allows you to hold this book in your hands. Everything is under His sovereign rule. Some of us believe that God is a bit like the president. He has a lot of power and authority, but there are checks and balances to limit Him. He is limited by our human choices, the events of the future, the wrongs of the past, or by those who do not believe in Him. Some of His legislations could be vetoed. His popularity can ebb and flow. But God is not like that at all. There are no limits to His rule and power.

Sara reared back in panic, but the door was already closed, and Craven's arms were around her. His hand clasped the back of her neck, and his voice puffed warmly into her hair. "Easy. All I want to do is hold you." "But I can't-" "Let me hold you." He kissed her neck and crowded her more closely against him. Slowly Sara relaxed. A pleasant languor spread from her head to her toes, and somehow she forgot there was a world outside the circle of his arms. There was only the warmth of his skin, banked within the layers of his clothes. And the movement of his hands as he worked the soft muscles of her neck and back. Even in her innocence, she was aware of the sinful knowledge in his touch. He knew how to hold a woman, how to seduce her away from inhibition. Blindly she lifted her face, and he kissed her. His lips seemed to wring her very soul from her body. Sara clung to him, wrapping herself closer until her aching breasts were wedged against his chest. He took hold of her waist, pressing her to his groin. As she felt the hard, insistent protrusion of his body, she broke away awkwardly. "I-I've had too much to drink. I must go, I must..." Derek gave a muffled laugh and stripped off his mask. Greedily he kissed her vulnerable throat, biting into the tender flesh. She gasped, trying to move back, but he caught the slippery waves of her hair in his fist. Murmuring reassurances, he nudged her off-balance and eased her down to the cushioned chaise. Objections wavered on her lips, all too quickly hushed by his mouth.

Fortunately, due to a terrible misunderstanding, I soon found myself working as a consultant to the World Bank. I am not exactly sure what it was that led the World Bank to believe I had any expertise in infrastructure finance. I had never even balanced a checkbook. I hadn’t even tried. There is not much reason to balance a checkbook when your checking account rarely tops the three-figure mark. And so, to the Third World countries who had the misfortune of working with me on their infrastructure projects, I wish to apologize.

The second, and related, question was why would an increase in money supply not stimulate spending, returning the economy to full employment? Keynes’s reply was that in a slump the demand for liquidity – emergency money – was so high that further injections of money would simply be absorbed in idle cash balances as a claim on generalised future purchasing power without any impact on current spending. The economy would be stuck in a ‘liquidity trap’. The argument was set out in Chapters 13 and 14 of The General Theory. They are among the more difficult and obscure parts of the book. It

As data analytics, superfast computers, digital technology, and other breakthroughs enabled by science play a bigger and bigger role in informing medical decision-making, science has carved out a new and powerful role as the steadfast partner of the business of medicine—which is also enjoying a new day in the sun. It may surprise some people to learn that the business of medicine is not a twenty-first-century invention. Health care has always been a business, as far back as the days when Hippocrates and his peers practiced medicine. Whether it was three goats, a gold coin, or a bank note, some type of payment was typically exchanged for medical services, and institutions of government or learning funded research. However, since the 1970s, business has been the major force directing the practice of medicine. Together, the business and science of medicine are the new kids on the block—the bright, shiny new things. Ideally, as I’ve suggested, the art, science, and business of medicine would work together in a harmonious partnership, each upholding the other and contributing all it has to offer to the whole. And sometimes (as we’ll find in later chapters) this partnership works well. When it does, the results are magnificent for patients and doctors, not to mention for scientists and investors.

Making money in the markets is tough. The brilliant trader and investor Bernard Baruch put it well when he said, “If you are ready to give up everything else and study the whole history and background of the market and all principal companies whose stocks are on the board as carefully as a medical student studies anatomy—if you can do all that and in addition you have the cool nerves of a gambler, the sixth sense of a clairvoyant and the courage of a lion, you have a ghost of a chance.” In retrospect, the mistakes that led to my crash seemed embarrassingly obvious. First, I had been wildly overconfident and had let my emotions get the better of me. I learned (again) that no matter how much I knew and how hard I worked, I could never be certain enough to proclaim things like what I’d said on Wall $ treet Week: “There’ll be no soft landing. I can say that with absolute certainty, because I know how markets work.” I am still shocked and embarrassed by how arrogant I was. Second, I again saw the value of studying history. What had happened, after all, was “another one of those.” I should have realized that debts denominated in one’s own currency can be successfully restructured with the government’s help, and that when central banks simultaneously provide stimulus (as they did in March 1932, at the low point of the Great Depression, and as they did again in 1982), inflation and deflation can be balanced against each other. As in 1971, I had failed to recognize the lessons of history. Realizing that led me to try to make sense of all movements in all major economies and markets going back a hundred years and to come up with carefully tested decision-making principles that are timeless and universal. Third, I was reminded of how difficult it is to time markets. My long-term estimates of equilibrium levels were not reliable enough to bet on; too many things could happen between the time I placed my bets and the time (if ever) that my estimates were reached. Staring at these failings, I realized that if I was going to move forward without a high likelihood of getting whacked again, I would have to look at myself objectively and change—starting by learning a better way of handling the natural aggressiveness I’ve always shown in going after what I wanted. Imagine that in order to have a great life you have to cross a dangerous jungle. You can stay safe where you are and have an ordinary life, or you can risk crossing the jungle to have a terrific life. How would you approach that choice? Take a moment to think about it because it is the sort of choice that, in one form or another, we all have to make.

Probably the first book that Hamilton absorbed was Malachy Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, a learned almanac of politics, economics, and geography that was crammed with articles about taxes, public debt, money, and banking. The dictionary took the form of two ponderous, folio-sized volumes, and it is touching to think of young Hamilton lugging them through the chaos of war. Hamilton would praise Postlethwayt as one of “the ablest masters of political arithmetic.” A proponent of manufacturing, Postlethwayt gave the aide-de-camp a glimpse of a mixed economy in which government would both steer business activity and free individual energies. In the pay book one can see the future treasury wizard mastering the rudiments of finance. “When you can get more of foreign coin, [the] coin for your native exchange is said to be high and the reverse low,” Hamilton noted. He also stocked his mind with basic information about the world: “The continent of Europe is 2600 miles long and 2800 miles broad”; “Prague is the principal city of Bohemia, the principal part of the commerce of which is carried on by the Jews.” He recorded tables from Postlethwayt showing infant-mortality rates, population growth, foreign-exchange rates, trade balances, and the total economic output of assorted nations.

There's a photograph I have of my mother in which her features are barely revealed. I recognize her from just her stance, some gesture in her limbs, even though it was taken before I was born. She is seventeen or eighteen, and snapped by her parents along the banks of their Suffolk river. She has been swimming, has climbed into her dress, and now stands on one foot, the other leg bent sideways in order to put on a shoe, her head tilted down so that her blond hair covers her face. I found it years later in the spare bedroom among the few remnants she had decided not to throw away. I have it with me still. This almost anonymous person, balanced awkwardly, holding on to her own safety. Already incognito.

Think of your energy requirements as a bank account. You make deposits when you consume calories. You make withdrawals when your body spends energy on work. Nutritionists divide the amount of energy you withdraw each day into two parts: The energy you need when your body is at rest The energy you need to do your daily “work” To keep your energy account in balance, you need to take in enough each day to cover your withdrawals. As a general rule, infants and adolescents burn more energy per pound than adults do, because they’re continually making large amounts of new tissue. Similarly, an average man burns more energy than an average woman because his body is larger and has more muscle (see the upcoming section “Sex,

Joint-stock companies could be similarly flexible. “The absence of close control by the British crown in the early stages of colonization,” Elliott points out, left considerable latitude for the evolution of those forms of government that seemed most appropriate to the people actively involved in the process of overseas enterprise and settlement—the financial backers of the enterprise and the colonists themselves—as long as they operated within the framework of their royal charter. In contrast to Spain’s “new world” colonies—and to the territories that France, more recently, had claimed (but barely settled) along the banks of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers—British America “was a society whose political and administrative institutions were more likely to evolve from below than to be imposed from above.” 10 That made it a hodgepodge, but also a complex adaptive system. Such systems thrive, theorists tell us, from the need to respond frequently—but not too frequently—to the unforeseen. Controlled environments encourage complacency, making it hard to cope when controls break down, as they sooner or later must. Constant disruptions, however, prevent recuperation: nothing’s ever healthy. There’s a balance, then, between integrative and disintegrative processes in the natural world—an edge of chaos, so to speak—where adaptation, especially self-organization, tends to occur. 11 New political worlds work similarly.

In the USA, the “corporament” exists as the: military (defense/offense) + industrial + academic (schooling – at all levels – as prison) + “corporament” entertainment (Hollywood, media, advertising/consumerism/commercialization, propaganda/psychological warfare) + judicial (defense and prosecutorial lawyers, judges, law enforcement/police, prisons) + financial (banks, accounting firms) + religion + petrochemical/pharmaceutical (drugs, antibiotics, antibacterials, vaccines, pesticides – toxins to kill or put you at “dis-ease” and drugs to “treat” you) + imperial commu-soci-capitofasdemocracism system/society/economy/Western thinking = Military-industrial-academic-“corporament” entertainment-judicial-financial-religion-petrochemical/pharmaceutical complex.

No revolution can be successful without organization and money. "The downtrodden masses" usually provide little of the former and none of the latter. But Insiders at the top can arrange for both.   What did these people possibly have to gain in financing the Russian Revolution? What did they have to gain by keeping it alive and afloat, or, during the 1920's by pouring millions of dollars into what Lenin called his New Economic Program, thus saving the Soviets from collapse?   Why would these "capitalists" do all this? If your goal is global conquest, you have to start somewhere. It may or may not have been coincidental, but Russia was the one major European country without a central bank. In Russia, for the first time, the Communist conspiracy gained a geographical homeland from which to launch assaults against the other nations of the world. The West now had an enemy.   In the Bolshevik Revolution we have some of the world's richest and most powerful men financing a movement which claims its very existence is based on the concept of stripping of their wealth men like the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Schiffs, Warburgs, Morgans, Harrimans, and Milners. But obviously these men have no fear of international Communism. It is only logical to assume that if they financed it and do not fear it, it must be because they control it. Can there be any other explanation that makes sense? Remember that for over 150 years it has been standard operating procedure of the Rothschilds and their allies to control both sides of every conflict. You must have an "enemy" if you are going to collect from the King. The East-West balance-of-power politics is used as one of the main excuses for the socialization of America. Although it was not their main purpose, by nationalization of Russia the Insiders bought themselves an enormous piece of real estate, complete with mineral rights, for somewhere between $30 and $40 million.   ----  

When Ghada, the beautiful 78 year old Palestinian woman, offered me the bread she had just conjured up on the makeshift and primitive cast iron lid balanced upon a rocky fire outside of her sparse UNRWA tent in 2015 it was precisely then that I decided that my life had to change. No longer could I justify vulgar material possessions and unnecessary finances. I returned home, sold my house,moved into a modest but adequate abode and gave a lot of time and funds to helping those with nothing. Some of us aren't destined to feel rapturous love...find deep faith...have a sense of belonging in this world but thanks to Ghada and the many like her, both young and old,that I encountered in Gaza and the West Bank I finally realized and truly understood what it meant to be a human being and what the real purpose of this life is....to help,to give,to speak out,to speak up,to right the many wrongs...to do all of those things without ever once expecting a single thing in return. After all, it is neither heroic or special to do what is just.

The traumatic aspect of drinking ayahuasca is that in order to heal yourself, you must first confront the wound; by forcing you to deal with your own inner garbage, ayahuasca shows you things about yourself that you might not want to see. I wish that a whole country could drink ayahuasca—not merely every individual citizen of a country, but the country itself, the spirit of the country. I wish that a flag could drink ayahuasca, that we could just fold the Stars and Stripes into the shape of a cup, pour in the tea, and transport Uncle Sam into another dimension. He’d have to fight his way out of some nightmares, but he’d be cleansed. What would he find? William S. Burroughs wrote that when you drink ayahuasca, “The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian—new races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized—pass through your body.” When Burroughs drank, he actually saw himself transformed into both a black man and a black woman. What if some freedom-hating narcoterrorists snuck into the Fox News studios and put ayahuasca in Sean Hannity’s coffee, just before he went live? What would be the day’s fair and balanced news for America? If America drank ayahuasca and then withdrew into the filthy pit of its own heart, confronting all its fears and hate and finally purging itself of that negative energy, maybe America would come out Muslim: sucked through a black hole by the Black Mind, young Latter-Day Saint crackers with smooth cheeks, short-sleeved white shirts, and name tags confront nightmarish visions of getting swallowed whole by giant grotesque “Jolly Nigger” coin banks and then find themselves vomited back up as Nubian Islamic Hebrews in turbans and robes selling incense on the subways. The “God Hates Fags” pastor, eyes wild with a new passion for Allah, boards a helicopter to drop thousands of Qur’ans upon the small towns below. I want to see ayahuasca’s vine goddess clean out America’s poison. But what would happen if a religion could drink the vine? What if I poured ayahuasca into my Qur’an?

[Hyun Song Shin] most accurately portrayed the state of the global economy. 'I'd like to tell you about the Millennium Bridge in London,' he began…'The bridge was opened by the queen on a sunny day in June,' Shin continued. 'The press was there in force, and many thousands of people turned up to savor the occasion. However, within moments of the bridge's opening, it began to shake violently.' The day it opened, the Millennium Bridge was closed. The engineers were initially mystified about what had gone wrong. Of course it would be a problem if a platoon of soldiers marched in lockstep across the bridge, creating sufficiently powerful vertical vibration to produce a swaying effect. The nearby Albert Bridge, built more than a century earlier, even features a sign directing marching soldiers to break step rather than stay together when crossing. But that's not what happened at the Millennium Bridge. 'What is the probability that a thousand people walking at random will end up walking exactly in step, and remain in lockstep thereafter?' Shin asked. 'It is tempting to say, 'Close to Zero' ' But that's exactly what happened. The bridge's designers had failed to account for how people react to their environment. When the bridge moved slightly under the feet of those opening-day pedestrians, each individual naturally adjusted his or her stance for balance, just a little bit—but at the same time and in the same direction as every other individual. That created enough lateral force to turn a slight movement into a significant one. 'In other words,' said Shin, 'the wobble of the bridge feeds on itself. The wobble will continue and get stronger even though the initial shock—say, a small gust of wind—had long passed…Stress testing on the computer that looks only at storms, earthquakes, and heavy loads on the bridge would regard the events on the opening day as a 'perfect storm.' But this is a perfect storm that is guaranteed to come every day.' In financial markets, as on the Millennium Bridge, each individual player—every bank and hedge fund and individual investor—reacts to what is happening around him or her in concert with other individuals. When the ground shifts under the world's investors, they all shift their stance. And when they all shift their stance in the same direction at the same time, it just reinforces the initial movement. Suddenly, the whole system is wobbling violently. Ben Bernanke, Mervyn King, Jean-Claude Trichet, and the other men and women at Jackson Hole listened politely and then went to their coffee break.

The phone rang. It was a familiar voice. It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do. In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk." O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in. "Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, to do the things we've always talked about." The jocular tone was gone. This was a serious discussion. They digressed into some things they'd "always talked about," especially reforming Medicare and Social Security. For Paul and Alan, the possibility of such bold reinventions bordered on fantasy, but fantasy made real. "We have an extraordinary opportunity," Alan said. Paul noticed that he seemed oddly anxious. "Paul, your presence will be an enormous asset in the creation of sensible policy." Sensible policy. This was akin to prayer from Greenspan. O'Neill, not expecting such conviction from his old friend, said little. After a while, he just thanked Alan. He said he always respected his counsel. He said he was thinking hard about it, and he'd call as soon as he decided what to do. The receiver returned to its cradle. He thought about Greenspan. They were young men together in the capital. Alan stayed, became the most noteworthy Federal Reserve Bank chairman in modern history and, arguably the most powerful public official of the past two decades. O'Neill left, led a corporate army, made a fortune, and learned lessons - about how to think and act, about the importance of outcomes - that you can't ever learn in a government. But, he supposed, he'd missed some things. There were always trade-offs. Talking to Alan reminded him of that. Alan and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, White House correspondent for NBC news, lived a fine life. They weren't wealthy like Paul and Nancy. But Alan led a life of highest purpose, a life guided by inquiry. Paul O'Neill picked up the telephone receiver, punched the keypad. "It's me," he said, always his opening. He started going into the details of his trip to New York from Washington, but he's not much of a phone talker - Nancy knew that - and the small talk trailed off. "I think I'm going to have to do this." She was quiet. "You know what I think," she said. She knew him too well, maybe. How bullheaded he can be, once he decides what's right. How he had loved these last few years as a sovereign, his own man. How badly he was suited to politics, as it was being played. And then there was that other problem: she'd almost always been right about what was best for him. "Whatever, Paul. I'm behind you. If you don't do this, I guess you'll always regret it." But it was clearly about what he wanted, what he needed. Paul thanked her. Though somehow a thank-you didn't seem appropriate. And then he realized she was crying.

I splash enough water in Chloe's face to put out a small house fire. I don't want to drown her, just exfoliate her eyeballs with sea salt. When she thinks I'm done, she opens her eyes-and her mouth. Big mistake. The next wave rinses off the hangy ball in the back of her throat and makes it to her lungs before she can swallow. She chokes and coughs and rubs her eyes as if she's been maced. "Great, Emma! You got my new hair wet!" she sputters. "Happy now?" "Nope." "I said I was sorry." She blows her nose in her hand, then sets the snot to sea. "Gross. And sorry's not good enough." "Fine. I'll make it up to you. What do you want?" "Let me hold your head underwater until I feel better," I say. I cross my arms, which is tricky when straddling a surfboard being pitched around in the wake of a passing speedboat. Chloe knows I'm nervous being this far out, but holding on would be a sign of weakness. "I'll let you do that because I love you. But it won't make you feel better." "I won't know for sure until I try it." I keep eye contact, sit a little straighter. "Fine. But you'll still look albino when you let me back up." She rocks the board and makes me grab it for balance. "Get your snotty hands off the surfboard. And I'm not albino. Just white." I want to cross my arms again, but we almost tipped over that time. Swallowing my pride is a lot easier than swallowing the Gulf of Mexico. "White than most," she grins. "People would think you're naked if you wore my swimsuit." I glance down at the white string bikini, offset beautifully against her chocolate-milk skin. She catches me and laughs. "Well, maybe I could get a tan while we're here," I say, blushing. I feel myself cracking and I hate it. Just this once, I want to stay mad at Chloe. "Maybe you could get a burn while we're here, you mean. Matterfact, did you put sunblock on?" I shake my head. She shakes her head too, and makes a tsking sound identical to her mother's. "Didn't think so. If you did, you would've slipped right off that guy's chest instead of sticking to it like that." "I know," I groan. "Got to be the hottest guy I've ever seen," she says, fanning herself for emphasis. "Yeah, I know. Smacked into him, remember? Without my helmet, remember?" She laughs. "Hate to break it to you, but he's still staring at you. Him and his mean-ass sister." "Shut up." She snickers. "But seriously, which one of them do you think would win a staring contest? I was gonna tell him to meet us at Baytowne tonight, but he might be one of those clingy stalker types. That's too bad, too. There's a million dark little corners in Baytowne for you two to snuggle-" "Ohmysweetgoodness, Chloe, stop!