Uplifting Boogie Woogie Dance

And who says the Swiss are quiet, boring and bland? Not me! Silvan Zingg on piano with two energetic dancers... perfect stimulation for holiday travels. Happy trails...

Who pays how much tax anyway?

With the recent upheaval within the US Congress over the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts, much of the debate has been over whether to increase rates for the "rich".  I was curious to discover how many tax payers there actually are and how collections are spread among the income groups.

As you note in the IRS chart below, there are only about 140,000 returns filed each year for just over $1 trillion collections.  As regards income, it seems that $33,000 is the break between the top 50% and lower 50%.  AGI means adjusted gross income.

Very interesting numbers!  For instance, the top 10% (with incomes above $114,000) have a total share of 45.7% of total income, but pay 69.9% of all taxes.  The top 1% of earners pay 38% of all monies collected by the IRS. They only earn about 20%.

The lower 50% (almost 70 million people), who are also in many cases receiving government benefits, pay only 2.7% of the entire monies collected. 

So, are the rich somehow escaping their fair share?  Do they have some sort of free ride?  Look at the data yourself and make your own decision.

There is an excellent commentary on this in a recent Reason Magazine piece.

2010 Year in Ideas - NY Times

The New York Times does a wonderful spread of top innovative ideas for 2010.  The interactive website gives short digests of each one.  An interesting selection and some noteworthy progress...

Growing Trend in Food Stamp Use

This holiday season is a tough one for many folks.  This graph illustrates a quite steep curve in United States food stamp usage in the past few years. It compares participation to the US U6 unemployment rate at 16%, which includes short-term discouraged workers who have stopped looking. 

One in eight people use food stamps.

For example, the number of Americans signing up for food stamps on the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has increased at an even faster rate in 2010 than in 2009, according to new USDA figures.

The number of people receiving food stamps in September 2010 stood at 42.9m, the newly released figures show, up by six million compared to a year ago, when 36.9m people were enrolled with the program – and a rise of more than 50 percent on 2008 numbers.

Last year, Americans were joining the food stamp program at an average rate of 20,000 a day; in 2010 the rate accelerated to 22,000 a day.

In order to qualify for the program, household income must be at less than 130 percent of the poverty threshold, roughly equivalent to $29,000 a year for a family of four.

The program cost $64.7bn in 2010, up from $34.6bn two years ago.

Participation levels have set new records for 22 straight months. According to White House estimates more than an eighth of the population will get food stamps each month in the year beginning October 1.

Graph from Agora Financial

Is there really low inflation in the United States?

As usual, a chart depicts quickly the true sense of the situation. On the graph below, on the far right, is the "official" CPI figure publicized as the core inflation number - and more importantly used to calculate many cost-of-living increases for retirements and pensions.  Note the rather low 1.1% "official" increase year on year.

Then there are the actual prices of some illustrative commodities (those things that are the raw materials for food and transport).  It is obvious the major price increases during just the past year, especially with the grains. (thanks to the good folks at Casey Research for compiling the chart).

Of course, this type of chart does not include such rising costs as health care, entertainment or housing.  And it also does not include all the low cost plastic and tech stuff (imported from China) one can find at the big box stores.  And of course, in many parts of the country, housing has cratered severely.

However, I think all of us realize that in our day-to-day lives prices are certainly much higher than 1% more than last year this time.  It is not an illusion.  Economist John Williams notes that since WWII the ways that consumer inflation is calculated has been continually tinkered with.  Increasingly over the past 25 years  starting with Alan Greenspan's term at the Federal Reserve, the means of valuing the  "basket of goods" used to track inflation was continually adjusted by such games as geometric weighting, chaining, and the newer concept of core.  

Shown below is the actual consumer inflation using Williams' traditional calculation (SGS) used for decades through WWII before the political shenanigans (CPI-U) began as a regular pattern.  As you see below, reflecting some of the commodity prices increases above, inflation can be seen actually at about 8%.

For those who are really interested in the formulas and rationale behind this, you can visit the excellent Shadow Government Statistics site.  I've met John several times at conferences.  He is the real deal - not flashy, but providing a clear window into the world of often arcane government economic statistics.  An in-depth review of the various inflation manipulations (done under both Democrat and Republican administrations) is contained in this analysis from an early SGS newsletter.

What does this mean?? 

What is means is that if you are simply holding savings in US dollar cash or low interest certificates, you are losing about 5-7% a year in purchasing power.  To protect yourself and maintain wealth, you need to consider diversifying investments in "hard assets" for the next few years - land, metals, perhaps shares of companies profiting from commodity increases, or even foreign currencies from commodity rich countries (such as Canada or Australia).

Good News in Health and Prosperity

Famous statistician Hans Rosling creates a 4 minute tour de force with 200 years of human development statistics! Very good news against the backdrop of short-term economic crisis and disruption.

Thoughts About the Wikilinks Diplomatic Dump

As confidential U.S. diplomatic documents continue to enter the public domain, it is worth remembering that not everything that is written down in a government document, even (or especially) in a classified document, is necessarily true. "Truth telling" involves a bit more than trafficking in official records. Any historian or archival researcher knows that. So did the famous Soviet agent Kim Philby, who spied against Britain for decades until he escaped just in time to Moscow.  He addressed the issue in his 1968 book "My Silent War" (p. 255):

"It is difficult, though by no means impossible, for a journalist to obtain access to original documents. But these are often a snare and a delusion. Just because a document is a document, it has a glamor which tempts the reader to give it more weight than it deserves. This document from the United States Embassy in Amman, for example. Is it a first draft, a second draft or the finished memorandum? Was it written by an official of standing, or by some dogsbody with a bright idea? Was it written with serious intent or just to enhance the writer's reputation? Even if it is unmistakably a direct instruction to the United States Ambassador from the Secretary of State dated last Tuesday, is it still valid today? In short, documentary intelligence, to be really valuable, must come as a steady stream, embellished with an awful lot of explanatory annotation. An hour's serious discussion with a trustworthy informant is often more valuable than any number of original documents."

"Of course, it is best to have both," he added.

Finally the Fed Admits to a Foreign Bank Bailout with TARP

The initial story was that the Fed via its Foreign Exchange liquidity swap lines had only bailed out foreign Central Banks, which in turn took the money and funded their own banks. 

It turns out that is only half the story: we now know the Fed also acted in a secondary bail out capacity, providing over $350 billion in short term funding exclusively to 35 foreign banks, of which the biggest beneficiaries were UBS, Dexia and BNP. See the chart above - click to expand.

Since the funding provided was in the form of ultra-short maturity commercial paper it was essentially equivalent to cash funding. In other words, between October 27, 2008 and August 6, 2009, the Fed spent $350 billion in taxpayer funds to save 35 foreign banks. 

And here people are wondering if the Fed will ever allow stocks to drop: it is now more than obvious that with all banks leveraging their equity exposure to the point where a market decline would likely start a Lehman-type domino, there is no way that the powers that be will allow stocks to drop ever... 

Until such time that nature reasserts itself, the market collapses without the Plunge Protection Team being able to catch it, and the Fed is finally wiped out in one way or another.

Analysis by Tyler Durden

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/meet-35-foreign-banks-got-bailed-out-fed

Europe Debt - How A European Bailout Package Works

Using the Irish Bailout Package as an example...

It is a slow day in a damp little Irish town. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. 

The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the pub. The publican slips the money along to the local “Lady of services” drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit. The “Lady of services” then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything. 

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town. No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how a bailout package works.  Likely originator: IAN FRIZZEL

********

And for a true discussion of the "magic" involved:

And me? I live in Slovakia!

Taking A Radical Look at K-12 Education

There is a lot of talk, money and energy being focused on reforming education. A lot of it emphasizes standardization. The animated 5 minute lecture below was adapted from a talk given in 2008 at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert. Sir Ken Robinson asks how do we make change happen in education and how do we make it last?

The original hour long lecture is here.

Good News About Child Mortality

Hans Rosling is famous for his presentation of statistics in easily understandable visual forms. This short talk focuses on the 8 Millennium Development Goals and takes one sample area. This is a presentation sponsored by TED (Ideas Worth Spreading).

This time his topic is child mortality, with a brilliant overview of how we collect statistics, how to get child mortality rates down (educating girls accounts for fully half of the improvements), and a lot of good news on development. Really excellent demonstration on the use of statistics and the dangers of averages.

And it is nice to see sometimes that things are working!

Slaves to Debt

Is this what the banking game is all about?

Excerpt from the movie The International (2009)

Thoughts About U.S. Employment

As I've been listening to all the commentary and arguments about unemployment lately, the numbers seem confusing and hard to get a grasp on. What does it actually mean to have a 10% unemployment rate in actual jobs?

The current Census Bureau website indicates that the total population is just about 310 million people.   Of these, there are large numbers (approximately 38%) that are either too young or now retired to be in the workforce.  This interesting graph shows the relative breakout of the US population (from the 2000 census) based on age and gender.

This brings us to a total potential US workforce of maybe 180 million people, although this does not include disabled or people otherwise out of the job market. From numbers I can find, it seems that full employment would be about 150 million people.  This graph from Economagic shows the growth of the non-farmer employed labor force over a 60 year period, topping out about 2007.

This chart below shows a comparison of  "official" unemployment rates since 1975.

However, the work of John Williams, of ShadowStats.com, tracks statistics according to former calculation models used up until the mid-1990s. His data indicates that the real unemployment rate once we consider those people who have dropped out of the labor pool and are underemployed is probably much higher at close to 22%!

This means that rather than the almost 15 million "officially" unemployed, there are actually almost 33 million people without jobs currently.  That is almost 1 in 4 of people in the US who are willing and able to work.  Well, perhaps given the many government subsidies, a certain group of these may not be "willing" anymore.

A very frightening situation, and one kept well hidden with media focus on either "doctored" macro statistics or focus on micro cases.

And, in any case, those who are employed? What are they doing these days? The chart below shows the greatest percentage of current top 10 job types... about 26 million people  in total.  Probably to be expected -- these jobs (other than some customer service reps) cannot be outsourced to Asia.

Special thanks to Casey Research for the creation of some of the charts above compiled from government data sources.

How the National Debt Climbs

I ran into this chart today and found it quite interesting in regards to both the cycles of debt, as well as the overall thrust upward since the time of Reagan.  As the Democrats are usually portrayed as the "spend and tax" regimes, it is quite interesting to see what happened during the conservative Republican terms in the White House.

Of course, given this steep increase - a debt passed on to future generations - it is unlikely that it can ever be paid off; except by a very steep (maybe runaway) inflation that while destroying the value of the US dollar, will also reduce hard-earned life savings to pennies in purchasing power. When a cup of coffee costs $1000 dollars, the national debt can be paid off easily in worthless dollars. Then whatever government that is left will shave off the many zeros on the end of the currency and issue a new currency. Probably tied to a gold standard.

When the dictator says enough...

A timeless and ageless speech with an universal truth formulated by a genius - made all the more great by the fact that it was given by a man who made a name in silent movies.

No matter whose lips speak the truth ... then the truth remains - food for thought for us all!

Charlie Chaplin in the Great Dictator, 1940.

The US Dollar slowly eroding in value

Everyone is always talking about inflation versus deflation. We may be having a partial bout of deflation just now in some parts of life (houses, cell phones and computers, Walmart plastic crap) by there are strong price rises as well (health care, food, fuel, education, entertainment).  So, we should probably just call it stagflation - same as in the late 1970s.

However, somewhat lost in the shuffle, is that the US dollar has been in a steady decline for over a hundred years.  After Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971, the decline really steepened for awhile.  But, it has not turned up except for very brief periods.  That is why the cup of java that you used to get for a dime or quarter, now costs $3 or $4 bucks.  Things really haven't gotten more expensive - the dollar has just lost value.

Some even place the blame on the activities of the Federal Reserve promoting low interest rates and printing lots of money for the recent steep decline.

When we consider the true historical currency - gold - and compare it against the major paper currencies, even in the past decade we see a sharp decline.

The early effects of the flooding of money into the economy during the past decade made many people feel more wealthy for a short time as house prices went up.  But, most of us have borrowed to the hilt and have become loaded with debt as our wealth has plummeted.

So, what to do in this time of declining value of holding cash or even low paying bonds?

One answer is buying a bag of gold or silver bullion coins (Eagles, Krugerrand, Maple Leaf).  This used to be considered a "disaster preparedness" insurance policy.  Now it makes just good common sense.

As you look at the increase in the price of gold just in 10 years, it has risen over 400% since 2001.  That means if you had $12,500 in gold coins (about 50 ounce coins) at that time, it is now worth $50,000. 

And when we compare it to the huge gold rise during the highly inflationary 1970s in the chart below (the gold line), we see that compared to that huge historical bubble,  currently gold (blue line) is just on a steady rise as the dollar declines. 

That is the thing about gold.  It is the ultimate money.  It does not change in value - only the paper monies issued by government slowly decline.  All paper currencies issued during thousands of years became worthless.  Gold maintains value and is almost indestructible.

Everyone should hold some in their savings. Just buy some small coins each month. 

Travelers' Century Club

I'm someone who travels quite a bit, both for business and pleasure.  It was interesting for me to stumble upon the Facebook Tripadvisor Cities I've Visited function.  As noted in macro detail below, it displays over 1000 cities in 64 countries I have hit in my travels in 5 decades.  

What is also quite evident visually is the many places I still need to visit in the south (Africa and South America) as well as north Asia.  If you travel a bit and use Facebook, this is a fun application to play with on a rainy afternoon. What is your total?

The Facebook definition of a country is quite conservative and very different from that of The Travelers' Century Club, which has an official list of 320 separate entities since March of this year.  Using this country list, available on their website, I am now in the high 90s and looking to top 100 in the next few years.  

My partner and spouse is more traveled than I and very close to the Century at this point with places I have not yet visited such as Moldova, Belarus, Madagascar, Montenegro, Serbia, Micronesia and a couple other Pacific islands.  My only unique advantage at this point is Iceland.

For the Club's purposes, with rules established in 1970, a country includes:

Although some are not actually countries in their own right, they have been included because they are removed from parent, either geographically, politically or ethnologically (see the Country Status page for detailed criteria). After consideration as to how long one must have stayed in a country or island group to qualify, it was decided that even the shortest visit would suffice — even if only a port-of-call, or a plane fuel stop. This greatly widens the field and will give the traveler a better chance to qualify for one of the most unusual clubs in the world. Anyone who has visited 100 or more of the places listed below is eligible to join

1. Government/Administration: Any geographic area with a sovereign government or separately administered as a colony, protectorate, trusteeship territory, territory or mandate shall be considered as a separate country.

2. Enclaves/Continental Separation: Continental land areas having a common government or administration but which are geographically discontinuous either by reason of being separated by foreign land not under their control, by being located on separate continents, or by being separated by a natural body of water shall be considered as separate countries provided their population exceeds 100,000. Multiple fragments separated by the same foreign country shall only count for one country.


3. Federations: A geographic entity which is a federation of separate geographically definable entitles, each of which is a separate republic/emirate/kingdom in its own right shall be counted as separate countries.


4. Islands/island Groups:

a. In island/island group not separately defined under section I shall be considered a separate country if.

1. It is situated at least 200 miles from the closest continental portion of its administrating country; or
2. Being located within 200 miles, it has a population exceeding 100,000 and is administered as distinctively separate state(s), province(s), or department(s).

b. Island groups that are parts of an island country within the definition of section I shall be considered separate countries if.,

1. They are situated at least 200 miles from the closest portion of the same island country; or
2. Being located within 200 miles, they have a population exceeding 100,000 and are administered as distinctively separate states, provinces, or departments.

5. Disputed Status: Geographically defined areas which have historically had an independent identity and whose current political status is the subject of dispute shall be counted as separate countries.


6. Unpopulated/Unadministered Areas: Any area which is unadministered or has no resident population will not be considered as a separate country, except for the political divisions of the Antartica.


7. Grandfather Clause. An area which is recognized as a country in the past may be retained as a country even if it does not fit any of the above criteria and any country that is deleted from the list will still count for the purposes of having reached the minimum number of countries required for membership or for the 150 or 200 country levels.

Changes in college degree emphasis

I ran across some graphs of Department of Education data today published by Casey Research.  It provides some visual comparison of interest in "softer" degrees in the liberal arts versus more technical degrees in the sciences.   These numbers represent graduates, so in most cases the student likely selected their majors 4 years prior to the completion of the baccalaureate.

Clearly the Woodstock generation of the late '60s swung the curve up, almost doubling graduates (especially English). This had a severe dip in the '70/80s  and then a brief bump (for reasons unknown to me) in the early '90s.

Interestingly, the hard sciences start rather low and then decline!

Math shows similar tendencies with a loss of 2/3 over 35 years!

Engineering showed a big bump in the later '80s, but has since declined to a more "normal" 6% graduate rate.

And as may be expected, business degrees became very popular in the early '70 - matching the equal decline in the liberal arts - and still accounts for over 20% of graduates.

 Of course, most degrees in business are like a "starters permit" and qualify one for everything from a night manager at McDonalds to the start of a career track on Wall Street.   And my experience is that many successful business professionals gained their education in the liberal arts (such as me - political science).

However, the slope of the graphs from the upper left to the lower right in many areas do not indicate a good forecast, especially in the science categories.  Of course, a number of majors are missing from these displays - but they are food for thought.

My close colleague, LyndiCoop wrote to tell me that much of the increase is in health and medical fields.  Students are fighting to get qualified for pre-med even before college.

Thinking about Identity in the modern world

In 2005, Dick Hardt, founder & CEO of Sxip Identity, delivered a compelling and dynamic introduction on Identity 2.0 and how the concept of digital identity is evolving. At 15 minutes long, it is a stimulating and provoking analysis... there is a little bit of tech stuff, but consider how we are evolving as humans in this internetworked world.

The Last Lecture - Achieving Childhood Dreams

This is one of my favorite presentations. Seemingly about time management, it explores many facets of life and living.

On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that claimed his life a few months later. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.

Using the power of the mind with affirmations

This is a chart I pulled out of the file cabinet this weekend. It illustrates some of the knowledge that I learned some 35 years ago while studying the Silva method of personal mind control.  There is evidence that there is higher "electrical energy" available at lower frequencies of brain rhythm (cycles per second).  This energy can be directed during active meditation to strengthen affirmative conditioning statements. 

Basically, frequencies run a range from very slow (< 4 cycles per second) while in deep sleep to the higher 30s or more during active aware consciousness.  The goal of all meditation techniques (also hypnotism) is to relax the consciousness from the active Beta level to the Alpha level near to 7 cycles a second. Many times we reach this state unthinkingly when we are daydreaming, or just before dropping off to sleep.  

The purpose of using relaxation count-downs in repetitive rounds (as in the Integrated Awareness conditioning) is to gradually allow the mind to slow down cycles toward the Alpha level.  Of course, if you get too relaxed, you quickly drop into Theta or Delta deeper sleep.  While it takes some practice, I've found that just listening to a guided relaxation for 10-15 minutes brings the desired results.  Once at Alpha, that is when the affirmation statements are their most powerful to embed into the unconscious and begin influencing conscious reality creation and experience. Alpha is the place where you want to work... and easily able to waken in case of any urgent need.

That is why it is very important to always preview these types of materials to insure you have full agreement with the conditioning suggestions.

Evolving changes in world GDP

An interesting ebb and flow on the China numbers, seems like they are on the rise again in the past 30 years. And of course, there are those years from 1500 - 1800.

Going out in style!

No matter what you think of the General, one has to admire his sense of humor!

Sweat the small stuff

Does Rory Sutherland have the correct idea?

Good night and good luck!

Still insightful 50 years later?

Why we do what we do, and how to do it better

Great tips from Tony Robbins....

Finding things on the web

I just found a great resource for doing internet research - A Working Smarter Resource by C4LPT out of the UK.  For example:

Here are 5 simple things to remember to "power search" on Google:

1. Search string: A group of search terms is called a string. You don't need to add a + or ADD between terms but leave a space. Try building your search string one term at a time
2. Google ignores common or "stop" words like the, an, in, where, how, but to include them in the search add + before each one
3. Phrase string: If you're looking for an exact phrase or quote, not just the occurrence of the words entered, use quotation marks "greenhouse effect"
4. Ranking favours pages with your words in phrases, close together and in the order typed. Compare the top results (ranking) for searches in Google for these sets of keywords
   
   • grass snake
   • snake grass
   • snake in the grass
   • snake +in +the grass
   • "snake in the grass"
5. Operators: adding a minus sign (-) allows you to narrow your search, for example if you wanted to search for New York but not City you'd enter New York -City; adding OR will let you look for one or more terms or strings, e.g. Kent OR Sussex, "global warming" OR "greenhouse effect".

Creating a search string that uses some combination of specific terms, a phrase string and a negative term can reduce the number of your search results from a few million to fewer than one hundred! It's best to build one or two terms at a time, adding terms to your string as needed based on your results.


Here are 5 clever things you can do with Google

1. Get definitions: Type define:word to produce a list of definitions
2. Use as a calculator: Google supports mathematical functions / * - +
3. Conversion: Convert imperial measurements to metric and vice versa as well as currency conversions using format such as 100 lbs in kg or. 300 euros in USD
4. Get maps: Type in the postcode
5. Get the weather forecast: Type in the postcode
6. Q&A: Ask a question, e.g. When was Beethoven born?

Approaches to Personal Investing

I taped this a couple of years ago, and find it is still relevant.

I am not a licensed financial adviser, and therefore do not seek to direct anyone to any specific type of investment purchase. However, the rules that I have adapted and applied allow for maximizing performance from a personal portfolio.

Observations on health

It always amazes about the human body, when thinking in a systems sense, the huge amount of focus people put on the inputs (diet), a medium awareness of process (nutrients uptake) and a total taboo concerning discussion / analysis on a major output (waste) of the system. 

In my opinion, the key to a healthy body system needs to start with a clear analysis of the outputs/results you are looking for both in the sense of psychic energy, vibrant tissue and cells, and healthy excrement of waste.

As always with everything, it is a matter of knowledge what to do and then discipline to apply it in life.

Besides the usual tips on diet and exercise for quality outputs, I have come to appreciate these additional jewels of knowledge that I strive to apply (buy haphazardly and usually in cycles).

a. chew - digestion starts in the mouth with saliva breaking down intake. With discipline, chewing each bite 40-50 times brings amazing effects

b. dry skin brushing - using a natural fiber brush at least once a day to strip off dead skin (which is continually replacing itself) is more important to health than hot showers and fancy potions. Short video demo.

c. several times a week nasal rinse (luke warm salt water).  The neti pot, which is so inexpensive and perfectly designed, helps keep away the sinus irritants. Do they work?

d. a weekly dry sauna helps to sweat out the heavy metals and crap through the skin pores; I have a portable home sauna that I've been using for almost 25 years

e. every 12-18 months, a colonic irrigation in a manner similar to an "oil change" in my car. I have the home equipment - I think gravity fed safer and certainly cheaper than commercial pumping systems.

f. drinking plenty of water

Anyway, even as I have come to know these simple tactics, it still takes a big discipline to make them everyday life habits (especially the damn chewing).

Integrated Awareness - Relaxation and affirmation

This is an Affirmation Conditioning  prepared and narrated by Steven Kelly.  Affirmations are positive statements that describe a desired situation.  They are best repeated many times, in order to impress the subconscious mind and trigger it into positive action. 

In order to ensure the effectiveness of the affirmations, they have to be repeated with attention, conviction, interest and desire.  Although many people use these in daily active life, reinforcement is also very useful during periodic meditative relaxation periods.  Please listen to the short introduction below if you have an interest to use or listen to this 30 minute conditioning sequence.

You can also freely download below either a WMV or MP3 file for personal use on a media player:

IA MP3 Version (47mb)

IA WMV Version (5 mb)

A favorite sunset sequence...