Managing employee performance every day is the key to an effective performance management system. Setting goals, making sure your expectations are clear, and providing frequent feedback help people perform most effectively. Learn more about managing performance.

Progressive Discipline

Performance Management Strategies
Do you have responsibility for supervising the work of others? If so, you know that employees don't always do what you want them to do. On the one hand, they act as if they are competent professionals. On the other, they procrastinate, miss deadlines, and wait for instructions. So, what's a supervisor to do? Performance management is your answer. You must begin by finding out why the employee is not meeting your expectations. This checklist for employee performance management will help.

Coaching for Improved Performance
Looking for a step-by-step coaching approach you can use to help an employee improve his work performance? This approach avoids discipline and produces great results.

How to Manage a Deadbeat Employee
A deadbeat employee is an employer's nightmare. You know the occasional employee I am talking about. He doesn't show up for work, calls in sick, and milks the time off policy, always walking on the edge, but never falling off. He walks the edge of the work policies and processes, too. He does just enough to stay employed but doesn't grow professionally nor contribute like your other employees. The deadbeat employee impacts your workplace and employees negatively, constantly, and insidiously.

Use Performance Management to Help People Succeed and Improve
Are you fed up with the return on investment you experience with your current performance appraisal? Ready to change your approach? You can improve productivity, motivation, and morale by handling performance management and development in new ways.

Improving Employee Performance
If you want to improve employee performance, think about your daily conversations with employees. No better opportunity exists to reinforce and help refine excellent employee performance. You discuss new projects, talk about overdue assignments, give updates about completed tasks, and more. Use these conversations to reinforce the importance of doing a great job. How? Link the employee performance to a workplace result.

You Get What You Request and Reward
Performance management encompasses the important people issues in your organization. Performance management includes the entire relationship you have with the people you employ. Performance management is a whole work system that begins when you define a job. Learn more.

Talent On-the-Bubble: Addressing Human Behavior at Work
One of the great lessons from Talent IQ is that the performance of talent gone awry is very seriously under-addressed in organizational life. Called “Talent On-the-Bubble,” a pattern of human behavior was identified that can take any organization and its leadership team down if left untended. Talent On-the-Bubble can make a mockery of organizational values, sap creative energy and drive highly talented top performers out. Find out how human behavior must be managed at work.

Top 10 Principles of Employee Empowerment
Looking for real management advice about people? You want to create an environment in which people are empowered, productive, and happy. Don't hobble them by limiting their tools or information. Trust them to do the right thing. These are the most important principles for managing people. They reinforce employee empowerment, accomplishment, and contribution. These actions enable people to soar.

Tips for Effective Delegation as a Leadership Style
Your leadership style is situational. Your leadership style depends on the task, the team or individual's capabilities and knowledge, the time and tools available and the results desired. These six tips for successful delegation will help you with employee involvement and employee empowerment as your selected leadership style.

How to Hold a Difficult Conversation
If you manage people, work in Human Resources, or care about your friends at work, chances are good that one day you will need to hold a difficult conversation. As an example, people dress inappropriately and unprofessionally for work; personal hygiene is sometimes unacceptable. These steps will help you hold difficult conversations when people need professional feedback.

Poll: Why Don't Employees Do What They Are Supposed to Do?
Provide Feedback That Has an Impact
Make your feedback have the impact it deserves by the manner and approach you use to deliver feedback. Your feedback can make a difference to people if you can avoid a defensive response.

Performance Improvement Plan
Looking for a format that's a winner when you want to help an underperforming employee succeed? The purpose of a formal Performance Improvement Plan is to help an employee succeed. This format enables you to set goals, establish measures, conduct review sessions and chart progress. Not convinced of the need for this procedure? Check out my introduction to the form. You'll be happy you did.

10 Tips For Taking Yourself Seriously, So Your Employees Do, Too
Looking for quick tips about how to set a positive example for staff members by taking the impact of your role as "boss" seriously? You've found ten tips here.

Performance Consulting, Measurement, and Improvement Books
Effective performance consulting and training can provide big payoffs for the employer in increased staff productivity, knowledge, loyalty, and contribution. These resources increase your ability to do performance consulting, measure performance improvement, and provide resultant training using internal staff. Increase your self-sufficiency in performance consulting and improvement.

Nix Political Discussion at Work
In a workplace that honors diversity, every person’s politics, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and opinions about non-work issues, should, for the most part stay home. Unless you work in a setting that is dependant on a particular set of beliefs, political discussion potentially causes conflict and hard feelings. Nix politics and political discussion at work.
The Awesome Power of Goal Setting
Heed the advice offered by Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, and Stephen Covey. When you begin your new year with solid direction and desired outcomes in mind, you set yourself up for awesome success. The new year is a beginning, so new goals and resolutions fuel your thoughts. These tips will help you achieve your goals and live your resolutions.

How to Give Good Feedback
Knowing how to give effective feedback can make or break performance feedback, according to this "Fast Company" article. Good pointers.

How To Set Boundaries With Problem Employees
At what point does an employee's behavior get in the way of accomplishing work? What do you do to manage the problem behavior of others? Read this excellent article by Dr. Joni Johnston.

Why People Do Not Get Fired: Discipline Avoidance
Good reading for every manager and supervisor. Are you psychologically prepared to address the problem behavior of your workers? Your work place will be better off if you do.

about.com

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By Patrick Martin

Two weeks before the April 2 economic summit of 20 leading capitalist countries in London, the American military held a war game simulating a concerted financial attack on the United States. The two-day event was held March 17-18 near Ft. Meade, Maryland, according to report published Thursday by the web site politico.com.

Three participants discussed the first-ever financial crisis war game with the web site, describing how they sat “along a V-shaped set of desks beneath an enormous wall of video monitors displaying economic data.” One participant described the experience as “a little bit like Dr. Strangelove.”

Those engaged in the exercise included hedge fund managers, economics and business professors and executives from UBS, a major investment bank, invited by the Pentagon to help it role-play a global economic crisis in which five “teams” participated, representing the United States, Russia, China, East Asia and “all others.” Uniformed military officers and US intelligence agents observed the exercise and took notes.

According to the account published by politico.com, “the savviest economic warrior proved to be China, a growing economic power that strengthened its position the most over the course of the war game. The United States remained the world’s largest economy but significantly degraded its standing in a series of financial skirmishes with Russia, participants said.”

The exercise was clearly driven by recent economic events. It was held only a few days after the Chinese premier publicly questioned the safety of his country’s vast holdings of dollar-denominated debt, including more than $1 trillion in US government bonds. Shortly after the exercise, a top Chinese central banker raised the possibility of replacing the dollar as the principal world reserve currency.

Professor Paul Bracken of the Yale School of Management told politico.com, “The purpose of the game is not really to predict the future, but to discover the issues you need to be thinking about.” The ongoing world financial crisis “loomed large over what everybody was doing,” he said.

Another participant underscored the political implications of the economic crisis, saying, “Why would the military care about global capital flows at all? Because as the global financial crisis plays out, there could be real world consequences, including failed states. We’ve already seen riots in the United Kingdom and the Balkans.”

While the event was not officially classified, many participants declined to discuss it with the press. It was conducted at the Warfare Analysis Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, run by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Among the eventualities examined in the war game were the collapse of North Korea, a US blockade of Iran, Russian manipulation of natural gas prices, and increasing tension between China and Taiwan, leading to China dumping some of its US dollar holdings. A group of referees dubbed the “White Cell” decided what the impact of the moves by each team would be.

According to politico.com, “At the end of the two days, the Chinese team emerged as the victors of the overall game-largely because the Russian and American teams had made so many moves against each other that they damaged their own standing to the benefit of the Chinese.”

Bracken told politico.com that the war game shed light on the connection between political-military events, like the US embargo of Iran, and the economic consequences, and also demonstrated that China could successfully sell off at least a portion of its dollar assets, undermining the financial standing of the United States, without wiping out its own reserves.

US security officials have already pointed to the political impact of the world financial crisis in terms of threats to the dominant position of American imperialism. Admiral Dennis Blair, Obama’s choice to head the US spy apparatus as director of national intelligence, told a Senate hearing February 12 that the economic crisis, not terrorism or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is “the primary near-term security concern” of Washington.

In delivering the “annual threat assessment” coordinated by the DNI across 16 separate US intelligence agencies, Blair was setting aside the Bush administration’s professed obsession with Al Qaeda, as well as more traditional security concerns with Russia and China, to suggest that “the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications” constituted a greater danger.

He described the financial crisis in apocalyptic terms, as “the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries,” and cited the possibility that economic turmoil could produce political instability and “high levels of violent extremism,” not only in the Middle East and South Asia, but in Latin America, Africa and the former Soviet Union.

Only a month after this blunt warning of the threat of social revolution, the Pentagon held its exercise simulating the geo-strategic impact of the crisis on relations among the great powers. It is only logical to assume that similar exercises, albeit unpublicized, are being conducted to prepare the US military forces to repress revolutionary uprisings of the working class both abroad and at home. wsws.org

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Question:
Respected scholars, as-salamu `alaykum. Please tell me briefly what are the causes of the world financial crisis. My second question is about the most important features of the Islamic economic system. Thanks.

Answer:
Wa `alaykum as-salamu wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.

Dear brother in Islam, thanks a lot for your question which reflects your care to have a clear view of the teachings of Islam. Allah commands Muslims to refer to people of knowledge to get themselves well-acquainted with the teachings of Islam as well as all aspects of life.

The world is now witnessing a financial crisis that threatens the reduction of the economic growth rate in most countries especially the most developed ones. It also threatens increasing depression and inflation as well as the collapse of Capitalism. Many analysts and economists are now looking to the Islamic financial system as an alternative.

Islamic economics according to Wikipedia Encyclopedia is economics in accordance with Islamic law. Islamic economics can refer to the application of Islamic law to economic activity either where Islamic rule is in force or where it is not; meaning, it can refer to the creation of an Islamic economic system, or to simply following Islamic law in regards to spending, saving, investing, giving, and so no, where the state does not follow Islamic law.

In his response to your question, Dr.Monzer Kahf, a prominent economist and counselor states:

Dear brother, the basic causes of the world financial crisis are:
1. Excessive and unwarranted extension of lending
2. Sale of debts from one bank to another that caused a domino effect
3. Trading fake contracts that are meant only for speculation
4. Too many financial transactions/trading with a small basis of touch to the real side of the economy
5. Too much unnecessary trading of currencies

Regarding your second question, we would like to state that the essential rules of economic activities in the Islamic system are:

1. Private property as distinct from public property, both coexist and private property is highly respected.
2. Economic freedom, the individual can do as he/she pleases with his property.
3. Requirement of zakah to make continuous adjustment to help the poor.
4. The prohibition of riba because it entails taking other people's property without creating any growth.
5. The prohibition of any enrichment without creating value added in the economy (this covers all other prohibited contracts including Gharar (undue uncertainty), sale of what one does not own, and so on.
6. The application of moral standards in what is produced (goods and services) and how to produce them.

For more information on this system I suggest that you read my part of the book Islamic Economics: Science of Illusion (in Arabic) and there are many other writings that you will find on the internet.

Source: Islamonline.net

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The former head of the US Reserve System, Alan Greenspan, described the current financial crisis as an even that occurs once in 100 years. Indeed, the world has not witnessed such a massive financial collapse for a very long time already. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers will become the largest bankruptcy in the corporate history of the United States. USA’s largest insurance company, AIG, also stands on the brink of collapse. The market remains in a state of shock, being unable to realize and cope with all consequences of the recent events, The Vremya Novostei newspaper wrote.

The decision of the US financial authorities not to render support to Lehman Brothers means that the state virtually makes the investment and bank sector to deal with its problems alone. Furthermore, the decision of the Federal Reserve System to keep the interest rate on the level of 2% is another proof of the fact that the authorities are not ready to take the risks of the system.

It became known Tuesday morning that the FRS intended to conduct currency interventions to maintain the liquidity of the market. The FRS decided to invest the additional $50 billion in the national financial system. Market members were 100% certain that the interest rate would be reduced, thinking that the two measures would logically supplement each other. As it turns out , they thought it wrong .

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the FRS decision have aggravated the international crisis of liquidity even further. The financial authorities of world’s largest countries took urgent measures yesterday to hold multi-billion-dollar currency interventions on their markets with a hope to avoid the crisis. Investors panicked and started selling their shares, which made European and Asian stock indexes drop by 2-5 percent.

It will obviously take long for the market to realize the consequences of Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The world financial system will be different afterwards.

The Bank of Japan assigned $25 billion to maintain the liquidity of the Japanese market. The government of the country also held a special meeting with the participation of the chairman of the nation’s central bank and ministers for economy and finance. The meeting was held in connection with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.

The ministers decided to coordinate all further steps in the financial field with the USA and the EU. The collapse of Lehman Brothers will evince a restricted influence on the Japanese financial market, although it does can affect the economy of Japan on the whole in the future.

The stock indexes of Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines dropped by over 4 percent.

pravda.ru

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The crisis in world financial markets began when prices started declining in the US real estate market in late 2006. So far, it is estimated that banks worldwide have had to writedown more than $550 billion in assets.

Here is a chronology of major events:

March/April 2007: New Century Financial corporation stops making new loans as the practice of giving high risk mortgage loans to people with bad credit histories becomes a problem. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns of risks to global financial markets from weakened US home mortgage market.

June 2007: Alarm bells ring on Wall Street as two hedge funds of New York investment bank Bear Stearns lurch to the brink of collapse because of their extensive investments in mortgage-backed securities.

July/August 2007: German banks with bad investments in the US real estate market are caught up in the crisis, including IKB Deutsche Industriebank, Sachsen LB (Saxony State Bank) and BayernLB (Bavaria State Bank).

US President George W Bush rejects government intervention to ease the crisis in the home mortgage market and says he wants the market to work. He later pledges help for struggling homeowners to help ease the mortgage crisis.

Foreclosures of US homes in July were up 93 percent from a year earlier, to 180,000 owners.

September 2007: British bank Northern Rock is besieged by worried savers; British government and Bank of England guarantee the deposits; the bank is nationalized. The US Federal Reserve (Fed) starts series of interest rate drops to ease impact of housing slump and mortgage crisis.

October 2007: Profits at US financial giant Citigroup drop sharply. IMF lowers 2008 growth forecast for the euro area to 2.1 percent from 2.5 percent, in part because of spillover from the US subprime mortgage crisis and credit market crunch.

December 2007: Bush unveils plan to help up to 1.2 million homeowners pay their loans.

January 2008: Swiss banking giant UBS reports more than $18 billion in writedowns due to exposure to US real estate market. In the US, Bank of America acquires Countrywide Financial, the country's biggest mortgage lender. Fed slashes interest rate by three quarters of a percentage point to 3.5 percent following sell-off on global markets. Another cut at month's end lowers it to 3 percent.

February 2008: Fannie Mae, the largest source of money for US home loans, reports a $3.55-billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2007, three times what had been expected.

March 2008: On the verge of collapse and under pressure by the Fed, Bear Stearns is forced to accept a buyout by US investment bank JP Morgan Chase. The deal is backed by Fed loans of $30 billion.

In Germany, Deutsche Bank reports a loss of 141 million euros for the first quarter of 2008, its first quarterly loss in five years. Fed spearheads coordinated push by world central banks to bolster global economic confidence by announcing moves to pump $200-billion liquidity into markets.

Carlyle Capital falls victim to US credit crisis as it defaults on $16.6 billion of indebtedness. US frees up another $200 billion to back troubled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

April 2008: IMF projects $945-billionlosses from financial crisis. G7 ministers agree to new wave of financial regulation to combat protracted financial crisis.

June 2008: Home repossessions more than double as US housing crisis deepens. Bear Stearns execs join 400 charged with mortgage fraud.

July 2008: California mortgage lender IndyMac collapses. Troubles for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to grow. US Treasury, Fed move to guarantee debts of Fannie, Freddie. Bush defends move, telling Americans to take a "deep breath" and have "confidence in the mortgage markets."

US Congress gives final passage to multi-billion-dollar program to address mortgage and foreclosure crisis. Spain's largest property developer, Martinsa-Fadesa, declares insolvency.

September 7: US government seizes control of Fannie, Freddie in $200-billion bailout.

September 15: Lehman Brothers investment bank declares $600-billion bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch acquired by Bank of America.

September 17: US bails out AIG insurance giant for $85 billion.

September 19: White House requests $700-billion bailout plan from Congress for all financial firms with bad mortgage securities to free up tightening credit flow.

September 22: Last two standing investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, convert to bank holding companies.

September 26: Feds seize Washington Mutual in largest-ever US bank failure.

September 29: US House of Representatives rejects mammoth $700-billion bailout plan.

September 29: Governmental bail-outs announced for key banks in Britain, the Benelux and Germany as well as a state takeover of a bank in Iceland. British government intervenes to save major mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley. Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg to take over substantial parts of Belgian-Dutch banking and insurance company Fortis.

German Finance Ministry announces that government and top banks were moving to inject billions of euros into troubled mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate. Iceland government and Glitnir bank announce state takeover of 75-percent stake in Glitnir.

September 30: Wachovia Bank teeters on collapse, starts negotiating with Citigroup for takeover deal.

October 1: US Senate adopts massive bail-out plan, adding sweeteners to get House acceptance.

October 3: Wells Fargo bank and the fourth-largest US bank Wachovia Corp announce merger.

October 3: The largest government intervention in capital markets in US history clears the US House of Representatives, becoming law with signature by President Bush.

dw-world.de

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by Maurizio d’Orlando
The depth of the current economic crisis is leading many people to favour a form of governance that would place economic and political life under the trusteeship of international organisations. Barack Obama’s new cabinet, which is made up of those responsible for the crisis, will ensure the ascendancy of financial interests. In the meantime no one is calling for the people to have power in the monetary sphere. The result is that democracy is being killed by financial power.

Milan (AsiaNews) – A new world order has been in the making for quite some time and is now becoming “inevitable”. Many a politician and economist are quick to say that great sacrifices are called for, and that any “reasonable” person will see that suffering and hardship are “necessary.”

The crisis that is currently affecting our lives is behind this global shift. The slow fire has moved from real estate, to banking and finances, and is now reaching industry, agriculture and the whole economy. From the heartland in the United States it is reverberating outward touching the entire world.

The fear of a domino effect and its potential for economic, political and social upheavals and the fear of widespread anarchy will provide the necessary tools to install this new order, which for most people will appear as the only possible outcome. The act of governing will change as a world body will be in charge the financial, economic and tax systems. Police, prisons and private relations inside and outside the family will come under its purview, so will national sovereignty of the peoples and the right to express opinions that are different from those of the single thought of relativism, which will be seen as the only solution that is available and desirable.

The G20 and the New World Order

Until a few decades ago such a new world order would have been anathema, a nightmare, a first step towards a worldwide dictatorship. Now world leaders will be praised when they show concern for the well-being of the earth’s peoples and social groups at a time of difficulties. Of course, this is what we will hear, and very soon too, in terms more unambiguous that we might think now. This said, new rules, a new Bretton Woods, are not anything new; discussions have been going on for some time. Perhaps the next G20 summit on 15 November will be a time when the “miracle” cure is found, one that will entail a world central bank that regulates a single currency of account and its relationship to local currencies.

After a short lesson and a quick diagnosis of the current problems, during which G20 participants will hear that “it was all the fault of Bush’s brainless laissez-faire advocates,” the same people responsible for the current crisis will supply the treatment for putting things right.

All we have to do is see who funded the most expensive presidential campaign in the former US superpower (more than a billion dollars at a time of great recession). As always some have bet on both horses just to be on the safe side. As we know Barack Obama pulled it off, money-wise too, almost twice as much as the Republican candidate. In addition to traditional sectors like show business, media, academe, education, information technology and the Internet, hedge funds, law firms (closely linked to the world of creative financial mediation) and private equity funds have bankrolled the new president’s campaign.”1

In order to change nothing, the appearance of everything has to change. In fact, only the surface had to change a bit; the new president’s darker skin. For everything else, it was business as usual. Indeed the cabinet of the new president is made up of the same, reckless people. Let’s see! We have Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Robert Rubin who have been short-listed for the Treasury Department; all of whom are extreme laissez-faire advocates who believe in an unfettered financial system, enemies of the Glass-Steagall Act.2 They are same people who swapped jobs at the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Clinton Administration; played sidekicks for Alan Greenspan and Ben Shalom Bernanke, or at the headquarters of Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Geithner); that is the same people who masterminded events before and after the current crisis.

Old faces in Obama’s new government

Obama picked Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, a man whose career straddled politics and Wall Street’s great financial groups. But there is more to his case. Not only his father was a member of the Irgun3 but he holds Israeli citizenship, has fought for Israel and represents that country’s armed forces. He also endorsed Obama before the leadership of the AIPAC,4 a US Zionist organisation that is also funded by the State of Israel and which has recently been involved in espionage cases. In Israel many view Rahm as “our man in the White House.”

Based on this perhaps the choice between the two candidates was not really equal. See-sawing in the polls for quite a while after an apparent jump, buoyed by the war in Georgia, the Republican camp saw its fortunes nosedive after President Bush refused in late August to provide Israel’s air force refuelling aircrafts for a long range mission5, in effect vetoing an attack against Iran. Starting with oil, the prices of primary commodities began dropping a few days later, negatively affecting investment banks, which had bet on high prices to compensate for losses in the home mortgage market, thus throwing the world’s stock markets into a tailspin in early September.6

Democracy and money

From all of the above it is clear that an Obama presidency will not change how the financial crisis will be handled. On the contrary, it will strengthen the trend to protect large institutions and industries at the expense of small enterprises and the man and woman of the street who voted for him. It is quite obvious that the G20 summit in Washington will not affect the central issue of the present financial and economic crisis (and the many preceding crises of modernity and post-modernity), i.e. sovereignty and system legitimacy.

In today’s world the only political regime that is considered fully legitimate in political and economic terms is democracy. Many wars have been fought to spread democracy and in democracy, by definition, the people are sovereign. However, if a highly developed and complex democracy like that of the United States can be guided (in the sense that voters are left with the illusion that they can choose when in fact their choices like in a supermarket are shaped by marketing, political marketing that is) by those with deep pockets, the legitimacy of the system no longer lies in the consent of the people since the latter goes to the highest bidder. Hence money becomes the basis of consent and power in a democracy.

There is nothing new in all this but the crucial point is that printing money is a sovereign act and is governed by laws. A creditor cannot refuse payment in money that has legal tender and demand instead payment according to his or her wish (gold, silver or what not) if he or she has not negotiated it beforehand. Those who control the money supply through ad hoc rules can favour some over others.7

Thus the paradox of modern democracy is that a sovereign people (through its supposed representatives, parliaments, heads of state and government) have de facto no power or right over the US Federal reserve (or the European Central Bank) with regards to such an important sovereign act.

In order to protect the public and avoid political interference printing money has been privatised and placed beyond public control. Through its representatives the sovereign cannot be trusted and thus is not sovereign. Few know that the US Federal Reserve was established under private law; the same is true for the Bank of Italy and many other central banks. It has been so since the dawn of parliamentary government, right after the Glorious revolution if 1688.8



1. See for example “Hedge Funds: Long-Term Contribution Trends,” in OpenSecrets [vedi: http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=F2700], retrieved on 13 November 2008; “Lawyers / Law Firms: Long-Term Contribution Trends,” in OpenSecrets [http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=K01], retrieved on 13 November 2008; and RENICK Mayer, Lindsay, “Obama's Pick for Chief of Staff Tops Recipients of Wall Street Money,” 5 November 2008, in OpenSecrets, [http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/11/obamas-pick-for-chief-of-staff.html], retrieved on 13 November 2008.

2. The Glass-Steagall Act split deposit banking from investment banking. The law was adopted in 1933 to prevent a repeat of the stock market crash of 1929 which caused the Great depression of the Thirties. The law was repealed in 1999 by the Clinton Administration. Creative financing, which is the root cause of the current crisis, was thus the brainchild of a Democratic, not a Republican administration.

3. Zionist organisation that carried out a violent campaign against the British in order to end Britain’s mandate over Palestine and set up the State of Israel. The mandate iself was established by the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations.

4. Jose, Katharine, “Obama's AIPAC Speech, Rahm's Endorsement,” in The New York Observer, 4 June 2008 [http://www.observer.com/2008/emanuel-endorses-obama-after-aipac-speech], retrieved on 13 November 2008.

5. “ZOA Critical Of Bush Administration Decision To Deny Refueling Aircraft To Israel,” 22 August 2008, in Zionist Organization of America, [http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=1419], retrieved on 13 November 2008; KEINON, Herb and Hilary Leila KRIEGER, “Barak: US clearly opposes military action against Iran now,” 14 August 2008, in The Jerusalem Post, [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1218446196991&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull], retrieved on 13 November 2008.

6. “Futures chart - Oil price chart,” Live Charts, [http://www.livecharts.co.uk/LongTerm/oil_price_chart.php], retrieved on 13 November, 2008.

7. For example, only firms listed in the Primary Dealers list (historically no more than 20, those that have recently topped the financial pages) can take part in the transactions and auctions by the Federal Reserve for billion dollar securities. See “Primary Dealer List,” in Federal Reserve Bank of New York, [http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/pridealers_current.html], retrieved on 13 November 2008.

8. Ties between finances and politics exist in modern parliamentary systems. Recent “orange revolutions” in Eastern Europe, backed by financier George Soros, were inspired by the historical precedent of the Glorious Revolution. Parliamentary rule prevailed in England at the time of the Glorious Revolution when James II (a Catholic) was ousted from power. But we should not confuse parliamentary government with constitutionalism. James II was the legitimate and constitutional sovereign because he had acknowledged the legislative powers of parliament. William of Orange, backed by an army of Dutch and German mercenaries and financed by Amsterdam bankers, invaded England and removed James II. In order to pay off his debts William, also known as the bankers’ king, granted private interests a monopoly over printing money with legal tender. He chartered the Bank of England and the Bank of Scotland. With capital worth two million pound sterling the Bank of England began loaning an equal amount for interest as well as issuing Gold certificates (paper money) for the same amount, thus doubling its capital. The Orangist army did not have to fight because William of Orange was backed by influential people who, instead of fighting the invader on the field, came to terms with him betraying their legitimate sovereign. The main character in the story founded the Churchill line.

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One of the words that is being tossed around with increasing frequency is "recession." And the question becomes this: can your personal finances survive a recession? Heavy debt and low savings are just the things that can cause you money problems during a recession. But there are some things you can do now before the recession really hits, to shore up your personal finances. And if the recession never hits? Then you are that much more ahead financially.

Four things that can help you prepare your personal finances for a recession

There are four main things you can do to prepare your personal finances for a recession:

1. Get out of debt. This is very important. You need to work hard to reduce your overall debt level. Pay down balances as much as you can. Put together a debt reduction plan that will help you dramatically reduce how much you owe to others. Debt can be a major problem during a recession, and if you have a lot of it, it can become difficult to take care of your other needs.

2. Build up an emergency fund. You need to build up an emergency cash fund to help you if needed. This is true of any time, but especially true in the run up to a recession. While you probably can't just set aside three to six months' worth of salary now, you can build up a reserve. Every little bit helps, and the important thing is to get into the habit of saving.

3. Consider blue-chip stocks. CNN Money points out that now is not the time to freak out about the stock market. Indeed, there is a good argument to buy, while prices are low. Here is what Walter Updegrave says on CNN Money:

"But remember, the shares you buy while the stock market is down will likely be the ones that will have generated the biggest gains a decade or more down the road. And the money you invest during market setbacks could very well provide the spending cash you'll need in your later retirement years."

Choose solid stocks that are likely to make a good recovery. They may not offer sexy returns right now, but they are the tried and true that will recover from a recession.

4. Consult a professional. A fee-based financial planner can help you chart your path.


If you plan carefully now, and take the appropriate steps, your personal finances should be able to survive a recession.

Tags: personal finances, finances recession, survive recession, personal finance blog,
stock market, get out of debt, debt reduction plan.
www.allbusiness.com

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