Where Are Your Investments?

America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions... The new law of evolution in Corporate America seem to be 'survival of the unfittest'...

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed - for lack of a better word - is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward of mankind - and greed, you mark my words - will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Gordon Gecko, as played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street (1987)

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other You cannot serve God and Money.

Matthew 6:19-24

It has been depressing to look at the stock market and my investment statements. Over the past year we have over 1/3 of the value of the stock market evaporate.

There are days of late where I get angry and frustrated over what has been happening with our economy. I blame Congress for lack of a oversight. I blame corrupt CEOs who raped their companies (and investors).

The sermon this week at church helped to put some things back in perspective.

As a nation we have become a debt based, materialistic society. We put our security in things around us - and over time they will fail or not satisfy us. They also create anxiety in our lives as we worry over them.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said that we can only serve one master - and we have choose whether that is God or Money. He pointed out that the eternal is more important than the temporal. (But we should not ignore the temporal - just keep it in the right perspective.)

When I was an undergrad, my fellow students and I loved the movie Wall Street. We all wanted to be part of the action in the finance industry - just without the illegal part. But I put my faith in the wrong things - a love for money. And it disappointed me in the end.

I have been through this before. I was invested in the stock market during the 1987 crash. I went through the Internet crash and 9/11 in 2001. Maybe today it hurt more because I had more. Maybe its because my faith was in the wrong place this time around.

What drives you? Where do you put your trust?

I still believe that the free market economy is the best - but the current situation is a lesson once again in what is most important.