Greg Saunders

Hey Peachtree City & AR....Summer is here and the surf is up!! California is coming to Georgia as the Beach Boys invade the Fred for two day, June 26th and June 27th with their unmistakable sound and scores of hits thatwe all grew up loving and cruising with!

Now just in case you are too young or grew up in a bubble, the Beach Boys are a certified classic American Rock band! The band was put together in 1961 by Brian Wilson and his brothers Carl and Dennis along with cousin Mike Love and buddy Al Jardine.

These rock n roll hall of fame dudes are arguably the #1 American record selling band of all time! The Beach Boys quickly rocketed to rock star stardom boasting surfing motifs in many of its early songs depicting the "good life" advocated by sunny southern California.

Remember those hits? "Surfin USA", "Surfer Girl", The Little Duce Coupe", "Good Vibrations", "Barbara Ann", "Dance, Dance, Dance", "I get Around", and one of my favorites, "California Girls." Dude and Dudetts slap me five 'cause these dude practically revolutionized the teen scene in California with surfing, bikinis, cars, dating and......rock music. What did you think I was going to say?

So com'on out and get caught up in the energy and nostalgia from one of the most renowned groups ever to hit the rock scene. By the way, be sure to pick up and check out the newly released Beach Boy compulation of Summer Love Songs which includes Dennis Wilson's rare track, "Fallin in Love." This track was previously only available on imports.

Reserved Seats: $55.00. The Lawn is already sold out!!!

For tickets and more information please contact the FRED:

http://www.amphitheater.org/

(Email:) info@amphitheater.org

Uploaded on July 2, 2008
by jigordon

Okay Peachtree City & AR, with all the financial fiasco going on here in our own backyard I've made every effort to only promulgate some of the more positive things related to our economy in efforts to minimize your stress levels and keep your attitudes as positive as possible. But, this one is so crazy you won't believe it to be true! I just had to write about what could turn out to be the biggest scam and/or counterfeit operation in history!

Two alleged Japanese nationals were taken into custody recently by the Italian Finance Authorities just last week after both attempted to cross the Swiss border with $134.5 billion dollars in undeclared U.S. Treasury bonds. That right folks...that's "$134 Billion" with a B dollars! Two of those bonds were one billion dollar Kennedy bonds, a denomination only used for national currency reserves. Now to give you some ideal of the enormity of this sum of money, $134 billion would be about 1% of GDP or about the amount of TARP bailout money left in the coffers.

Apparently the bonds were hidden in 2 suitcases with false bottoms containing some $500 million dollars each. According to my research, the Italians require you to declare monies over $10,000 euros in efforts to crackdown on money laundering and evidently these bonds had not been declared. The 40% penalty or approximately $38 billion would have been enough to pretty much wipe out all of Italy's national debt. But here is the kicker...Italian authorities were not even initially able to determine if the bonds were real or not.

To my knowledge the Federal Reserve has never issued bonds so I am a little confused with the Italian authorities initially being unable to distinguish real bonds from fakes. Hmmmm....However, it does lend credence to the fact that the counterfeiters work is so good that the fakes were indistinguishable from real bonds. My other concern is that someone had extensive knowledge of these instruments because how else would the fact be known that there was such an instrument as a billion dollar Kennedy bond or would be able to have access to the replica of his (Kennedy's) image. Heck, has anyone you know seen one of these bonds?

Okay folks, I know your head is reeling now with a multitude of questions. I'm probably sure that the most qualified one is, "Who can even purchase that large of a sum of securities?" That's a great question. Only sovereignty like a state or country can make that large of a purchase because the financial market are not privy to issuing and handling that kind of transaction. These and still more hair-raising questions in just a moment.

Before we even go there, let's go back a few weeks to the end of May to another incident that managed to fly under the radar. Italian prosecutors shut down an effort by the Sicilian mafia that attempted to use fake Venezuelan bond to set up over $2 billion dollars in credit lines with Bank of America, HSBC, and several British banks. This unbelieveable scheme is something almost straight out of the "Godfather" as "La Costa Nostra" continues its efforts to go legit increasing their already burgeoning bottom line estimated at $130 billion! Allegedly, corrupt Venezuelan central banking officials reportedly verified the fakes. That allegation was shot down by government officials. So, okay who are you going to believe, Italian prosecutors or Hugo Chavez! Wow, Martin Scorsese prayers were just answered as he couldn't in his wildest dreams have asked for a better plot for a next film to write and direct!

So could these two single incidents be connected in some sic convoluted way? Nobody is talking. Heck, nobody even really reported these events. Has crime taken flight to this grandiose a scale? Plus, what impact would this type of fraud have perpetrated on the money supply in the US? Can you say H-Y-P-E-R-I-N-F-L-A-T-I-O-N! Are our financial markets under siege by these sophisticated and well orchestrated new white collar criminals? I just saw the remake of the movie the Taking of Pelham 123 with Denzel Washington and John Travolta where the devious mind of a ex-con and former stock broker uses a massive kidnapping and murder scheme in New York to negatively impact the markets and enable him to legally make a 15,000% profit on his gold shares. A mere pittance to the $10 million dollars in ransom he requested from the City.

But really, can these two incidents be considered an unbelievable coincidence or point to something much darker? Is the road paved to the truth of these incidents blocked by Mafiosos like the Sicilians and Japanese Yakuza, corupt business entities, politicians and central banking officials?

Seems like we are all being held hostage these day!!

Listen up Peachtree City & AR potential First Time Home-Buyers!!

Now you can believe all the the hype you have been hearing.... there may never be a better time for first-time home buyers to buy a house than right now!

That's right folks...it was recently announced that plans are in process to permit FHA-approved lenders to provide short-term bridge loans, allowing eligible home buyers to access the their tax credit funds at closing instead of waiting for the tax credit in 2010. This can be your ticket to getting money to help cover closing costs and your down payment.

According to Realtor.org, "FHA-approved lenders received the go-ahead to develop bridge-loan products. FHA lenders are currently awaiting guidance from HUD on the development of these products...." Now please be advised that the monies CANNOT be used for down payments but home buyers can use to it to help cover their closing costs, buy down their interest rate, or put down more than the minimum 3.5 percent thereby saving more moo-la on interest charges.

As you know, the first-time homebuyer tax credit was implemented to help encourage households to enter the housing market while interest rates are low and home affordability is still high. The credit worth up to $8,000 does not have to be repaid, and is fully reimbursable, so households can get their credit returned to them in the form of a payment.

Hey folks it's time to get off the fence and get on the horn to a real estate agent and mortgage broker today! Oh, excuse me my phone is ringing....this must be you!

Hello again Peachtree City and AR! This blog has definitely no lack of controversial subject mater. So are you ready for this one? Ready or not....here goes!

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the 61-year-old physicist who is also a Nobel laureate in physics, says that he has the solution to the green house emissions that would literally be like taking every car off the road on this planet for 11 years! Pinch yourself and read on. This geo-engineering phenomenon would involve the painting of the roofs of homes and businesses.....WHITE!!!

Okay folks, I'm sure everyone has their own take on the scientist-turned-politician's advice to Prince Charles and the world. Further, for a more provacative debate you'd also probably have to stand in line as Chu has been all but Chu-ed up by a lynch mob of environmentalists over decisions he's rendered about America's campaign to fight global warming. But putting all the political horseplay and bantering aside....Is there any merit in the whole premise of white paint reflecting sunlight enabling buildings to stay cooler and using less energy? I didn't have a lot of physics courses in school but I do know that white paint emits less radiation so it would help to keep homes cooler in summer. In regards to the winter, you would probably have to have pretty good insulation.....but most heat is lost by convection, not radiation. My research has ascertained that it is all about Albedo....ability to reflect light back into space.

Essentially, the white rooftops would function just like the clouds reflecting heat back into space. About 50% of sunlight is visible light and the other 50% is heat. I know this sound like more hype and I'm not a scientist but the premise of these factors leading to about a 50% reduction of visible energy from the sun has to be at least acknowledged and researched further at this point. But for all those that are still processing this information...we'll just let that info marinate in your head for a few. But continue on my friends, there is more to this story.

So alright...think of it this way. Every year we would keep out of the atmosphere approximately 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide or the emissions produced by 60 million cars! On a bigger scale if we painted every roof in 100 major cities it would offset the entire planet's carbon emissions for one year. That just about 44 metric gigatons of Co2!!!!

I'm also inclined to think that if we do roof we might as well also consider our concrete and asphalt roadways. Every summer it gets so hot that you can see haze and smoke literally rising off the pavement. In Atlanta the asphalt get so hot that I could have sworn I saw the devil running butt-naked down the road nursing a sunburn. Okay so maybe it was just someone with a sunburn that ran out of gas from sitting in traffic. But traffic and rising oil prices are other issues and posts I'll reserve for another time!

Anyway, just for the record, let's go to the experts. I'm sure any scientist will state that there is conclusive
evidence that support the correlation between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the increase of global temperatures. Hashem Akbari and Surabi Meno, along with Art Rosenfeld, California Energy Commissioner and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, are so convinced that this idea will work, that they have proposed a "Cool World" Plan that would use white roofs, and solar-reflective roofs of other colors, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help delay atmospheric heating effects.

Alright folks I hear ya rumbling out there. What would this type of project costs, right? Well the estimates I found were about $2.50 to $3.00 per square foot. So if you were to look at a 100,000 square ft facility the cost would be about $300,000. On the flip side that same ar-conditioned building here in Georgia would would probably recoup those cost pretty quickly in energy savings. By the way, talk about a boost to the job market...look how many jobs could possibly be created by this endeavour alone. (Not to mention paint stocks) I'm not a politician either but this agenda could be the beginnings of a serious debate which could include merit consideration for a tax credit to individuals and businesses to assist with implementation costs.

If this concepts still does not make dollars and sense to you, let's break it down to what we were all taught by our parents growing up. We all wore light colored clothing in the warm months because we stayed cooler that wearing dark ones, right? Additionally, if you have had an opportunity to travel especially to a Mediterranean country it is no surprise that residential homes and roofing came in a cornucopia of cool colors and roofing materials. This new research by Akbari, Rosenfeld, and Menon goes on to give estimates on how much cooling might be possible, in equivalent mass of carbon dioxide, by converting roofs and pavements in the world's urban areas to solar-reflective surfaces. Their research calculate that retrofitting 1,000 square feet (about 100 square meters) of roof with cool material that reflects 60 percent or more of the sun's heat would offset the emissions of 10 metric tons of CO2.

Starting to make sense now? Folks there is already tried and true technology out there for us to utilize in addressing this problem. Not only that...there has been technology around for just more than a minute. By the way, an even more startling revelation from my research found that in 30 years more than two-thirds of all the people inhabiting this earth will live in urban areas! Yes our cities will be gi-normous and if we don't get a handle on this now, the problems are obvious. To give you an example, did you watch the Olympics? The air quality in our major cities pale in comparison to Beijing. If this still sounds absurd to you, I understand your cynicism....however do your own research. The information is out there and available to us all. Don't be so naive to think that a real problem does not exist and even more-so that it will just go away!

Yeah...I hear ya now! Something needs to be done and with all the wasted energy being exerted by some of our elected officials.......it's all just enough to make you lose your cool!

Hey Peachtree City and AR community....There is no doubt that the ECONOMY has provided the ultimate scapegoat! Not enough money...blame the economy. Lost jobs, blame the economy. Increase in gas price, blame the economy. Gained a bunch of weight, definitely blame it on the economy!

Okay, so I'm being a little facetious but in this economy I think everyone would agree that we all need something that can bring a smile to our faces. What we need is.....a real recession-buster! I pondered a minute then I remembered one of the things that seemed to always bridge the proverbial gap.....MUSIC!

Of course not just any music....it had to be something that was timely and relevant! How about a song about the.....Economy!

So here it is folks....enjoy! And if you didn't, simply blame it on the economy!

Click here > Blame It On The Economy!!! High Five's and fist-bumps (Dap) to all going through it!!