If you have already received this, I apologize for the duplication and the wasting of your time. If you haven’t, please take a few minutes and read on.

As you can probably tell by reading this, I have left the mortgage world. As of January of 2011, I’m now working full time for God’s Littlest Angels – the orphanage in Haiti that we adopted our two youngest children from. No, we haven’t moved to Haiti, we’re still in Michigan. What am I doing for the orphanage? Very simply, I’m responsible for connecting people who want to help the orphans in Haiti with the “right” opportunity to help with what God’s Littlest Angels is doing. If you want to learn more about GLA, go to http://ping.fm/AUvws and check us out.

But I need your help – can you go to http://ping.fm/PaxXG and do a couple of things:
Take 6 minutes and watch the video that tells a bit about GLA, how we got started and what we’re doing.
Vote for us (if you register, you can get up to 3 more votes) and vote for us again.
If you would be so inclined as to share this with your friends on Facebook, tweet about it on Twitter or use the old fashioned e-mail, we’d greatly appreciate it.

By November 4, the top 10 vote getters will enter the finals. The judges will then decide which of the top 10 get the $50,000, $20,000 or $10,000 awards.

$50,000 would provide enough baby formula for us to feed our infants for a year, so it would be a great help.

Thank you in advance for your help with this.

Oh, and I promise this is a one time mailing. I’m not going to keep sending you stuff about what’s happening at the orphanage and how you can help. If you want to know more, go to http://ping.fm/uXEBK and on the right hand side, you can keep up with everything we’re doing by a variety different e-mail lists we have.

If you want to talk about “life in general” feel free to give me a call. If you want to talk about how you or your company might be able to help in Haiti, I’d love to talk to you. Have a good day and thanks for taking a few minutes to read this and help us out.

Tom Vanderwell
Manager of Partner Relations
at God’s Littlest Angels Orphanage
Office: (616) 884-8901
Mobile: (616) 292-7559
tom@glahaiti.org
http://ping.fm/8Rmh2
http://glahaiti.org
Skype – tvanderwell
Facetime on my Mac -
tom@glahaiti.org
Help us win a $50,000 grant and feed our babies for a year. Go to http://ping.fm/c2ptz

Made with Serial Mail – http://ping.fm/iTjEf

In terms of the number of banks failed, at 22, we’re way down from the S & L crisis of earlier years.   However, in terms of the size of what has failed, we’re way up.

If Citibank doesn’t make it, this chart won’t fit on the page.

Thanks to Calculated Risk for the chart.

Are your investments properly diversified?  Including the appropriate amount of investment real estate?   Talk to Jeff Brown if you aren’t sure.

Tom Vanderwell

The Commerce Department said personal spending decreased by 0.3% in September after stagnating in August. The measure has not been this weak since June 2004, when it fell 0.4%.

via Personal spending slides – Oct. 31, 2008

This is one of those reports that will, if market fundamentals are in place, put downward pressure on mortgage rates.   We’ll have to see if that happens.

Tom

“Why am I being punished for having bought a house I could afford?” he asked. “I am beginning to think I would have rocks in my head if I keep paying my mortgage.”

No Mr. Lawrence, you’re doing the honest and ethical thing.   You made an agreement, live up to it.

“If the lunch truly is free, the demand for free lunches will be large,” said Paul McCulley, a managing director with the investment firm Pimco.

There truly is no such thing as a free lunch.   Someone, somewhere will have to pay for it.

“This is not about trying to create fairness,” said Michael H. Krimminger, special adviser for policy at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is working with Treasury on the latest plan. “The goal is to keep people in their houses.”

Has anyone asked the question, “At what price do we keep these people in their homes?”   What are the long term consequences of keeping people in homes that they shouldn’t have purchased originally?   What are the consequences of providing subsidies to a certain section of our home owning neighbors without doing the same for everyone?

“If all of our neighbors are getting bailed out despite their own bad decisions, arrogance or ignorance, and we’re asked to keep playing by the rules for the sake of the greater good, I don’t want to participate,” Mr. Luker said.

That’s where these type of things get really difficult.   How are we going to equitably determine who gets bailed out and who doesn’t?

I’ll write more about it later, but I believe we are going to see more and more of the term “unintended consequences.”   We (collectively) meant to do _____  but instead this happened.

Tom

via Calculated Risk: Fed’s Yellen: “Economy Contracting Significantly”