Prophetic Insights I

The scripture teaches us that in the last days the world will become aimless and full of purposeless greed. Power will be sought to aggrandize things seeking hope and safety.

1. Fear of losing will stifle creativity such that real increase ceases and there is a minus net sum.

2. Spiritual babes shall rule in imbalance such that fear increases geometrically.

3. Great sums shall be wasted by deceiving powers and promises.

4. Persons will count hope as selfish and material gain, soon, losing the balance necessary to empower each other.

5. Gain and advantage over others will be considered blessedness.

6. Fools without souls shall be counted wise and virtuous for their inhumanity.

7. Ideals will deteriorate into sound bites.

8. Joy will become full of brutality, envy and revenge; humanity and love soon despised.

9. Neighbor will spy against neighbor to assure that they do not destroy the form of the neighborhood as they kill the peace.

10. As more and more individuals start ‘just doing my job’, less gets done; laws, red tape, procedures and delays shall increasingly corrupt the multiplication of seed.

The end is soon near when the process is considered more necessary and worthy of consuming time and resources than the product.

11. The celebration of foolishness and trivia will cause wisdom to be despised and understanding abandoned.

12. There will be no desire for truth as foolishness will parade as humor, the sensual as sensitivity, and myopia as profound insightfulness.

13. When there is darkness and corruption, information will be counted as knowledge, and knowledge as wisdom; thus any choice will, by intuition, be counted wise.

14. People who have no goals, hence no values and priorities, shall turn to intuition as the basis for law.

15. Perception shall be based on perspective; truth, which requires balance, shall be abandoned.

Without truth, waste, fear, and ungodliness multiply.

In the last times people will trust strangers more than neighbors, acquaintances more than family, lawyers more than preachers, friends more than teachers, fables more than facts, selfishness more than love, and pleasures more than God.

Knowledge of righteousness will fade as intuitive and sensual concepts become imbued with profundity, and truth despised.

The distinction between anecdotes, statistics, and parameters will be lost so that any information will be considered typical thus losing insight into the fundamental nature of both corporate and individual challenges, and how to solve them.

Policy makers, the press, opinion leaders, governments, analysts etc must begin to search for truth and underlying causes in their attempt to solve specific problems.

For example, the common understanding is that the current economic crisis was caused by reckless underwriting of unqualified persons who were given mortgages without the ability to repay. However statistics show that these mortgages are performing at a rate greater than ninety percent even today.

On the other hand, it had been proven statistically that the mortgage crisis was caused by the reckless trading of derivatives based upon the subprime mortgages which multiplied the exposure of the world economy to poorly collateralized securities.

The anecdotal explanation is that a lot of unqualified persons were given mortgages which they could not afford. This evidence appeals to the intuition of many people including analysts who should have been searching for truth.

More importantly, the actual counts of the population of mortgages will yield parameters that verify the fact that the economic crisis was caused by the reckless underwriting of derivatives and financial instruments, and not by the actual foreclosures themselves.

Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars to recover the economy, results have been relatively inconsequential. The failure of the recovery effort is caused by the substitution of intuitive thinking for actual analysis. The problem has never been the credit-worthiness of persons who may have been locked out of home ownership prior to them being able to obtain subprime mortgages. And yet, subprime mortgages are considered to be the problem which caused the current crisis.

As a consequence of this thinking, banks and financial institutions have tightened credit underwriting, increased down payment and imposed much stricter requirements on all persons seeking mortgages thereby actually frustrating economic recovery.

If subprime mortgages did not cause the crisis, then tightening up credit and mortgage underwriting will not solve the problem. Indeed, such measures will exacerbate and prolong the recovery by stopping the ordinary flow of home purchases and the underlying equities that a vibrant housing economy provides. Indeed, the ability to buy depends on equity; equity depends on sales and price; sales and price depend upon demand and supply; demand and supply depend upon credit availability; and credit availability depends upon equity, and so forth.

Despite programs to help desperate home owners, to expand home purchasing, and revitalize economic activity, the economic recovery effort is failing because of bad analyses.

The solution is, no matter what appeals to us intuitively or what our political perspectives is or what our prejudicial dispositions may be, analyses should be objective and always looking for truth according to the best information available.

Without truth, waste, fear, and ungodliness multiply.

Economic Recovery dollars without paradigm shift is wasted

The government is attempting to regenerate and recover the economy through the expenditure of billions of dollars on infrastructure and other community improvement projects. Typical of the need for a paradigm shift in the method and strategy by which such funds are expended is the recent proposed $21 million-interchange at Liberty Road/I-695 in the Randallstown area of Maryland. The current method is to focus on the building of the interchange as opposed to the economic empowerment to the community that could be embodied in the funds being spent.
It is commonly agreed that economic recovery and jobs depend very much upon the viability of small businesses at the community level. Yet there is a disconnect between this fundamental idea and the method by which government programs operate.

Specifically, through the screens and hurdles of qualifications, licensing, rules, regulations, guidelines for bonding, corporate capability, government delays and red tape, little of the money spent filters down to the small businesses that would multiply jobs and re-circulate capital in local communities.

Similarly, many years of government expenditure of perhaps trillions of dollars to recover blighted and impoverished inner city neighborhoods have yielded exactly the opposite outcomes: joblessness and economic despair continue in a downward spiral for the persons indigenous to the inner city.

These outcomes can no longer be funded and tolerated economically. Without more empowering results from government expenditures, we are doomed to intransigent and long-term deficits without the results of generating new economies.

In this context, the economic blight of local neighborhoods will spread even as government deficits rise allegedly to empower and support impoverished communities.

We can no longer afford this kind of result.

How does proposed I-695 interchange help Randallstown residents recover economically?

1. The Issue

Recently the Baltimore County Government has circulated a notice to residents of Randallstown areas regarding the disbursement of $21 million to construct the proposed Liberty Road/695 Beltway interchange. The notice alerts residents of the inconveniences that this proposed project will cause.

The purpose of this project is to inject much-needed energy into the local economy towards the broader national recovery effort. Specifically, it is supposed to be aimed at

- Empowering communities to recover from the economic crisis

- And, to facilitate transportation and commerce

2. The Scope

This proposed two-year project will affect the Randallstown (21133)-Windsor Mill (21244)-Gwynn Oak (21207) areas, populated primarily by African-Americans, and about evenly divided between singles and married couples. The median age here is 35.5. There are 49,482 men and 58,633 women (http://www.neighborhoodlink.com) many of whom are affected severely by the current economic crisis such as loss of employment, homelessness, foreclosures etc.

3. The injustice

I urge you to note that the notice sent is solely focused on the inconveniences that the proposed project will cause residents. Absent are the following:

- Any hope provided for the approximate 30,000 persons in these neighborhoods who have suffered from the economic downturn – no jobs, no business opportunities, no capital. This notice completely overlooks the possible benefits of this expenditure which could help the economic recovery of the residents

- There is no mention of any programs to train, apprentice or provide employment and career opportunities to 25,000 youth in this area

4. The call to action

This method of government expenditure will leave the local community in worse condition economically but with a new interchange. The continued waste of billions of dollars on building things but not communities and people will not only destroy possible economic benefits but it is also a deception to a public that needs true economic empowerment.

Once again, funds allegedly spent for economic recovery will be spent to build an interchange, but this will not produce economic recovery, because the very persons that need empowerment by these projects are locked out of the process.
If this infuriates you as it does the majority of us,

- Let us meet, organize, and make our voices heard

- Call your representatives with copies of this mailer and demand action

5. For more information
Go to www.gcbradford.com for more an alternative, inspired way to empower yourself and your family.