Unit Investment Trust Quotes

Even a moment's reflection will help you see that the problem of using your time well is not a problem of the mind but of the heart. It will only yield to a change in the very way we feel about time. The value of time must change for us. And then the way we think about it will change, naturally and wisely. That change in feeling and in thinking is combined in the words of a prophet of God in this dispensation. It was Brigham Young, and the year was 1877, and he was speaking at April general conference. He wasn't talking about time or schedules or frustrations with too many demands upon us. Rather, he was trying to teach the members of the Church how to unite themselves in what was called the united order. The Saints were grappling with the question of how property should be distributed if they were to live the celestial law. In his usual direct style, he taught the people that they were having trouble finding solutions because they misunderstood the problem. Particularly, he told them they didn't understand either property or the distribution of wealth. Here is what he said: With regard to our property, as I have told you many times, the property which we inherit from our Heavenly Father is our time, and the power to choose in the disposition of the same. This is the real capital that is bequeathed unto us by our Heavenly Father; all the rest is what he may be pleased to add unto us. To direct, to counsel and to advise in the disposition of our time, pertains to our calling as God's servants, according to the wisdom which he has given and will continue to give unto us as we seek it. [JD 18:354] Time is the property we inherit from God, along with the power to choose what we will do with it. President Young calls the gift of life, which is time and the power to dispose of it, so great an inheritance that we should feel it is our capital. The early Yankee families in America taught their children and grandchildren some rules about an inheritance. They were always to invest the capital they inherited and live only on part of the earnings. One rule was "Never spend your capital." And those families had confidence the rule would be followed because of an attitude of responsibility toward those who would follow in later generations. It didn't always work, but the hope was that inherited wealth would be felt a trust so important that no descendent would put pleasure ahead of obligation to those who would follow. Now, I can see and hear Brigham Young, who was as flinty a New Englander as the Adams or the Cabots ever hoped to be, as if he were leaning over this pulpit tonight. He would say something like this, with a directness and power I wish I could approach: "Your inheritance is time. It is capital far more precious than any lands or stocks or houses you will ever get. Spend it foolishly, and you will bankrupt yourself and cheapen the inheritance of those that follow you. Invest it wisely, and you will bless generations to come. “A Child of Promise”, BYU Speeches, 4 May 1986

They became the directing power in the life insurance companies, and other corporate reservoirs of the people’s savings-the buyers of bonds and stocks. They became the directing power also in banks and trust companies-the depositaries of the quick capital of the country-the life blood of business, with which they and others carried on their operations. Thus four distinct functions, each essential to business, and each exercised, originally, by a distinct set of men, became united in the investment banker. It is to this union of business functions that the existence of the Money Trust is mainly due.[1]

The closest most people have ever come to understanding what an investment banker does may have been on October 24, 1995, when they heard the outrageous special interest story of the day. The wire services released the story first. It was quickly picked up and parroted by almost every major media outlet in the country as a classic example of Wall Street excess. A fifty-eight-year-old frustrated managing director from Trust Company of the West, on an airplane trip from Buenos Aires to New York City, downed an excessive number of cocktails, got out of his seat in the first-class cabin of a United Airlines flight, dropped his pants, and took a crap on the service cart. There you have it. That’s what bankers do: consume, process, and disseminate.

There is a vast difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. The difference is commitment. Motivation and discipline will not ultimately occur through listening to sermons, sitting in a class, participating in a fellowship group, attending a study group in the workplace or being a member of a small group, but rather in the context of highly accountable, relationally transparent, truth-centered, small discipleship units. There are twin prerequisites for following Christ - cost and commitment, neither of which can occur in the anonymity of the masses. Disciples cannot be mass produced. We cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual personal attention. Discipleship training is not about information transfer, from head to head, but imitation, life to life. You can ultimately learn and develop only by doing. The effectiveness of one's ministry is to be measured by how well it flourishes after one's departure. Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to teach others as well. If there are no explicit, mutually agreed upon commitments, then the group leader is left without any basis to hold people accountable. Without a covenant, all leaders possess is their subjective understanding of what is entailed in the relationship. Every believer or inquirer must be given the opportunity to be invited into a relationship of intimate trust that provides the opportunity to explore and apply God's Word within a setting of relational motivation, and finally, make a sober commitment to a covenant of accountability. Reviewing the covenant is part of the initial invitation to the journey together. It is a sobering moment to examine whether one has the time, the energy and the commitment to do what is necessary to engage in a discipleship relationship. Invest in a relationship with two others for give or take a year. Then multiply. Each person invites two others for the next leg of the journey and does it all again. Same content, different relationships. The invitation to discipleship should be preceded by a period of prayerful discernment. It is vital to have a settled conviction that the Lord is drawing us to those to whom we are issuing this invitation. . If you are going to invest a year or more of your time with two others with the intent of multiplying, whom you invite is of paramount importance. You want to raise the question implicitly: Are you ready to consider serious change in any area of your life? From the outset you are raising the bar and calling a person to step up to it. Do not seek or allow an immediate response to the invitation to join a triad. You want the person to consider the time commitment in light of the larger configuration of life's responsibilities and to make the adjustments in schedule, if necessary, to make this relationship work. Intentionally growing people takes time. Do you want to measure your ministry by the number of sermons preached, worship services designed, homes visited, hospital calls made, counseling sessions held, or the number of self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus? When we get to the shore's edge and know that there is a boat there waiting to take us to the other side to be with Jesus, all that will truly matter is the names of family, friends and others who are self initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus because we made it the priority of our lives to walk with them toward maturity in Christ. There is no better eternal investment or legacy to leave behind.

Many researchers have sought the secret of successful education by identifying the most successful schools in the hope of discovering what distinguishes them from others. One of the conclusions of this research is that the most successful schools, on average, are small. In a survey of 1,662 schools in Pennsylvania, for instance, 6 of the top 50 were small, which is an overrepresentation by a factor of 4. These data encouraged the Gates Foundation to make a substantial investment in the creation of small schools, sometimes by splitting large schools into smaller units. At least half a dozen other prominent institutions, such as the Annenberg Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust, joined the effort, as did the U.S. Department of Education’s Smaller Learning Communities Program. This probably makes intuitive sense to you. It is easy to construct a causal story that explains how small schools are able to provide superior education and thus produce high-achieving scholars by giving them more personal attention and encouragement than they could get in larger schools. Unfortunately, the causal analysis is pointless because the facts are wrong. If the statisticians who reported to the Gates Foundation had asked about the characteristics of the worst schools, they would have found that bad schools also tend to be smaller than average. The truth is that small schools are not better on average; they are simply more variable. If anything, say Wainer and Zwerling, large schools tend to produce better results, especially in higher grades where a variety of curricular options is valuable. Thanks to recent advances in cognitive psychology,

The clash between growing political equality and growing economic inequality is, in many ways, the big story of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world. In the United States, this conflict gave rise to the populist and progressive movements and the trust-busting, government regulation, and income tax the disgruntled 99 percent of that age successfully demanded. A couple of decades later, the Great Depression further inflamed the American masses, who imposed further constraints on their plutocrats: the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking, FDR’s New Deal social welfare program, and ever higher taxes at the very top—by 1944 the top tax rate was 94 percent. In 1897, the year of the Bradley Martin ball, incomes taxes did not yet exist.

Trick #1 for Farming Humans is the ability to invisibly commit crime. Chapter 1, Page 9, Ring of Gyges Trick #2 for Farming Humans is to allow professionals to create rigged systems or self serving social constructs. Chapter 4, page 28 (Lawyers who serve corporate interests are often incentivized to assist in harming the society to increase their own security. SEC, Bernie Madoff, Corporations as invisible friends, Money laundering assistance) Trick #3 in Farming Humans is making it legal for insider manipulation of public markets for private gain. (Boeing CEO) page 32 Trick #4 for Farming Humans is Justice prefers to look only down…rarely up towards power. Chapter 5, page 33. Trick #5 for Farming Humans is “let us create the nation’s money”. What could go wrong? Found in Chapter 7 on page 38. Trick # 6 in the game of Farming Humans, to create something which gives a few men an elevated status above the rest. Southern Pacific Railroad taxes, to Pacific Gas and Electric deadly California fires, to Boeing aircraft casualties. Paper “persons” cannot be arrested or jailed. Trick #7 for Farming Humans is a private game of money creation which secretly “borrowed” on the credit backing of the public. Chapter 9, page 51. Federal Reserve. Trick #8 for Farming Humans is seen in the removal of the gold backing of US dollars for global trading partners, a second default of the promises behind the dollar. (1971) Chapter 15, page 81 Trick #9 for Farming Humans is being able to sell out the public trust, over and over again. Supreme Court rules that money equals speech. Chapter 16, page 91. Trick #10 for Farming Humans is Clinton repeals Glass Steagall, letting banks gamble America into yet another financial collapse. Chapter 17, page 93. Trick #11 for Farming Humans is when money is allowed to buy politics. Citizens United, super PAC’s can spend unlimited money during campaigns. Chapter 18, page 97. Trick #12 for Farming Humans is the Derivative Revolution. Making it up with lawyers and papers in a continual game of “lets pretend”. Chapter 19, page 105. Trick #13 for Farming Humans is allowing dis-information to infect society. Chapter 20, page 109. Trick #14 for Farming Humans is substitution of an “advisor”, for what investors think is an “adviser”. Confused yet? The clever “vowel movement” adds billions in profits, while farming investors. Trick #15 for Farming Humans is when privately-hired rental-cops are allowed to lawfully regulate an industry, the public gets abused. Investments, SEC, FDA, FAA etc. Chapter 15, page 122 Trick #16 for Farming Humans is the layer of industry “self regulators”, your second army of people paid to “gaslight” the public into thinking they are protected.

REITs. Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs (pronounced “reets”), are companies that own and collect rent from commercial and residential properties.10 Bundled into real-estate mutual funds, REITs do a decent job of combating inflation. The best choice is Vanguard REIT Index Fund; other relatively low-cost choices include Cohen & Steers Realty Shares, Columbia Real Estate Equity Fund, and Fidelity Real Estate Investment Fund.11 While a REIT fund is unlikely to be a foolproof inflation-fighter, in the long run it should give you some defense against the erosion of purchasing power without hampering your overall returns. TIPS. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS, are U.S. government bonds, first issued in 1997, that automatically go up in value when inflation rises. Because the full faith and credit of the United States

we need simply look at how capitalism changed after the idea of shareholder supremacy took over—which only happened in the final decades of the twentieth century. Prior to the introduction of the shareholder primacy theory, the way business operated in the United States looked quite different. “By the middle of the 20th century,” said Cornell corporate law professor Lynn Stout in the documentary series Explained, “the American public corporation was proving itself one of the most effective and powerful and beneficial organizations in the world.” Companies of that era allowed for average Americans, not just the wealthiest, to share in the investment opportunities and enjoy good returns. Most important, “executives and directors viewed themselves as stewards or trustees of great public institutions that were supposed to serve not just the shareholders, but also bondholders, suppliers, employees and the community.” It was only after Friedman’s 1970 article that executives and directors started to see themselves as responsible to their “owners,” the shareholders, and not stewards of something bigger. The more that idea took hold in the 1980s and ’90s, the more incentive structures inside public companies and banks themselves became excessively focused on shorter-and-shorter-term gains to the benefit of fewer and fewer people. It’s during this time that the annual round of mass layoffs to meet arbitrary projections became an accepted and common strategy for the first time. Prior to the 1980s, such a practice simply didn’t exist. It was common for people to work a practical lifetime for one company. The company took care of them and they took care of the company. Trust, pride and loyalty flowed in both directions. And at the end of their careers these long-time employees would get their proverbial gold watch. I don’t think getting a gold watch is even a thing anymore. These days, we either leave or are asked to leave long before we would ever earn one.

30 percent—Domestic equities: US stock funds, including small-, mid-, and large-cap stocks 15 percent—Developed-world international equities: funds from developed foreign countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and France 5 percent—Emerging-market equities: funds from developing foreign countries, such as China, India, and Brazil. These are riskier than developed-world equities, so don’t go off buying these to fill 95 percent of your portfolio. 20 percent—Real estate investment trusts: also known as REITs. REITs invest in mortgages and residential and commercial real estate, both domestically and internationally. 15 percent—Government bonds: fixed-interest US securities, which provide predictable income and balance risk in your portfolio. As an asset class, bonds generally return less than stocks. 15 percent—Treasury inflation-protected securities: also known as TIPS, these treasury notes protect against inflation. Eventually you’ll want to own these, but they’d be the last ones I’d get after investing in all the better-returning options first.

Financial securities, unit trusts are also value storages as the initial money put in such instruments is invested in such with the ideology that at a much later stage, interest would have been accrued and therefore the return will be higher