Greg Saunders

Looking for a great place to shop but tired of the same ole shopping mall experience? How about checking out The Avenues in Peachtree City, Georgia?

The Avenues At Peachtree City offers shopper a different experience with a more open-air feel to its upscale shopping experience. Come enjoy the small town feel of this community with its unique architectural appointments such as sprawling green landscaping and ornamental arrangements, park benches and ornamental lamp posts, bronze sculptures, and those sparkling fountains giving the Avenues a modern feel and a fresh urban flavor.

As you take a stroll on the beautiful promenades you will find a host of beautifully decorated storefronts reflective of the swank and sophisticated styling of local and national merchants. However, the developers and architects, Cousins Properties took pain-staking measures to evoke parameter and the diversity of the stores and shops contributed to the overall design intentions of this magnificent shopping mecca.

Getting hungry? Well the selection of speciality restaurants is awe-inspiring. In fact, some even offer bistro and outdoor seating. The environment of The Avenues At Peachtree City reflects the convenience you seek, and the ambiance of the upscale malls coupled with beautiful landscaping, spacious promenades and ample parking.

I'm sure while you're enjoying shopping or dining at one of the restaurants more than likely you are bound to meet friends or family since The center has fast become a popular meeting spot as it is not only convenient but offers the convergence of shopping and recreation.

Come experience the The Avenues difference with shops offering unique gift ideas food, fun and the latest trends from Ann Taylor Loft, Jos. A. Bank Clothier, The Bombay Company, Kirkland's, Talbot's, Williams-Sonoma Boulignini Shoes & accessories, Victoria's Secret, Banana Republic, Children's Place, Claire's Boutique, Atlanta Bread Company, Ritz Camera, Yankee Candle, Starbucks Coffee, Ted's, Thai Spice and more!

For more information contact:

The Avenues At Peachtree City
200 City Circle
Peachtree City, GA 30269-3120
(770) 486-6587

Hey AR, Remember the scene from the classic 1983 movie with Al Pacino, "ScarFace" where the mob boss Frank Lopez (played by Robert Loggia) was bringing in the new guy Tony Montana? Big Frank told Tony with a vociferous voice, "never underestimate the extent of the other person's greed!" Wow, I can see Spielberg or Scorsese chomping at the bit waiting to see how things play out with AIG and the Feds. They are probably anticipating not only a huge movie blockbuster but more that likely a sequel to boot...Cha-Ching!

How about the scene from Wall Street where the great Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)is recruiting his next protege, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen). Gekko is in his office where no expense has been spared right down to the cuban cigars on his desk. He get up on his soap box and begins pontificating to Fox. "The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bull*@%$!"

With a smirk, Gekko's continued with his indoctrination. "You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you." "Greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit," Gekko concluded.

Indulge me for one more example. One of my favorite movies was the Wizard of OZ. Yep, it is so metaphorically messaged besides it links to then Populist theory that I also utilize it to illustrate how we fall all so often for the smoke and mirror. Basically, I find the story to be an ingenious parable written by L. Frank Baum related to the effects of US Monetary policy on the American population. By the way, Baum was a shy and sickly guy who was also owned a newspaper, was a student of Shakespeare and the son of a oil tycoon.

In the Wizard of OZ Dorothy (representing American Values) was told that if she followed the yellow-brick road (which symbolizing the debate in the 1896 election to use gold as the standard for currency.) to the Emerald City (Washington DC) that she would be able to get to the great and powerful OZ ("0z" representing an ounce of gold) who would be able to send her back home, right. In the meantime on the road she met the Scarecrow (representing farmers) who wanted a brain, the tin man (the industrial worker) who wanted a heart, and the cowardly lion (representing Democratic presidential candidate Williams Jennings Bryan) that wanted some courage. Even Dorothy's shoes which were originally silver, representing the silver standard. Look at all the metaphoric symbolism.

Then when the group (Toto too) finally reach their destination (The Emerald City) they are gripped by fear because nobody has seen the wizard or even gone to his throne room. So there he was this big huge head with no body, red eyes a monstrous voice and it even spitted fire. They when Dorothy asked for the Wizard to help her get back to home the wizard conditionalized her request by telling Dorothy she had to kill the wicked witch of the west (President William McKinley). Of course, Dorothy got her wish to go back to Kansas and good ole Aunt EM through Glenda the Good witch (Grover Cleveland) but remember she had to give up the "golden cap." However what was also so intriguing was that eventually when we peeked behind the curtain, the Wizard of OZ was a fraud! He was just a regular man...but it was fear that gave him his power and influence. Sounds familiar?

To be honest folks, getting past the metaphors, and other cinematic similarities, we have some huge
problems to deal with in our country. Yes, the spotlight and mobs are all focused on AIG right now and maybe they should be. But if you really peep the wizard if the focus is on AIG you will find that the $135 million paid in bonuses pales in comparison to the $120 Billion AIG paid out to mostly European banks due to all the "credit default swaps" sold. What's a credit swap? Basically a credit default swap is insurance against a debt default. Now picture the magnitude of this product in the face of our current mortgage crisis.

As you know, Joseph Cassanos was the man behind the AIG debacle and was "retired" effective March 31, or 2008. Probably about the same time the retention bonuses were negotiated. The language regarding the bonuses did include mention that the bonuses could be withheld if fraud or a felony could be proven. But what you may not know is that Cassanos' golden parachute included a nine month contract for consulting services for $1 million per month.

I know what you are thinking folks. I can paraphrase your thoughts by coining another memorable quote from the movie Network, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Well in that movie the
character Howard Beale was speaking about change too. He just felt you had to get mad enough first.
Not a problem, that seems to be the sentiment of Capital Hill...right Barney? But the real revelation here is that our economy is now global and interlocked with emerging economies like china playing a big role. As further proof AIG not only operates in 50 states but 140 countries! So, could the real flaws be in a collapse of disciplines in the private markets? Maybe even more so the global economic model.

Is monetary policy enough to end this financial crisis? What about the proposed Obama budget that would literally add on 1 trillion dollars to our debt for the next decade? Did you also know that the Treasury is planning to buy up more toxic assets? Is the currently financial climate going to allow for the partnering of investors and the Feds giving the same groups responsible for this crisis an opportunity to make even more money?

Again, just food for thought. By the way, stay tuned, President Obama is live in prime-time this week.

Okay Peachtree City, I heard all kind of scuttle-butt related to President Obama's take on correcting the financial structure of our country and supposedly suspending this system. Now I know your next question will be, "What the heck is Mark-to-Marketing and how is it related to our current financial crisis? Remember Enron and Worldcom and a host of other unscrupulous companies that bilked investors out of billions. Yeah, somebody cooked their books! Unfortunately not to many folks knew how. But the real question here may be, "Could our financial meltdown be pinned down to something as simple as an obscure accounting rule?"

Maybe so...remember this rule was so devastating that FDR suspended it in 1938. So why would the Bush administration resuscitate it again in 2007. I know Forbes reported additional catastrophe and casualties resulted from the short sales of stock which went unseen and unenforced by the SEC picking off a huge number of solid companies. Anyway this post is not about politics but about understanding our plight. So let's look at the facts! But first what is Mark-to-Market?

Simply defined, Mark-to-Market is where companies reprice or Mark their assets on a daily basis to the most recent market transaction price. So if a company assets prices are tanking, this would mean that the value of their assets on the banks or the company's books drops. When the total value of assets fall, then those who have lent them money get really antsy. Why? Because the assets they lent the company money against now are worth less. So if the company all of a sudden can't pay back the loan, the lender is in deep water. Of course then the lender is going to demand that the company immediate raise some cash or add assets to increase their asset totals. If the the company cannot comply, the lender steps in and either takes back enough assets to cover their loan, or find some other way to cover the loan amount.

Okay folks, it is no secret that the epicenter for the current economic crisis resulted from trillions being
lost in the mortgage meltdown. Heck, for years Wall Street has been cooking up all these risky investment vehicles perpetrated through structured financing. Finally, all these risky sub-prime mortgages were neatly package and gift wrapped into lucratively attractive investment securities, called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Then all hell broke loose as the bottom fell out as home prices plummeted and foreclosures soared.

Now, if I remember correctly to determine an assets book value it is basically the cost of the asset minus any depreciation. On the other hand, the market value of that same asset would be be the price the market would bear if that asset was sold right now! However, companies valuation of their assets is another story. Yes, most companies use accepted rules and practices to determine book valuation. Also, if I'm not mistaken the SEC and the Federal Accounting Standards Board required companies to use mark to market valuation on all their mortgage-backed securities. However, as you probably assessed, these complicated algorithms or derivatives used to compute the valuation of an asset have short-coming and can be easily manipulated. Basically, it is a fact that a company's market value assessment has fallacies due to the fact that there is no guarantee that any future transactions will result in similar values for that asset. That determination can't be known until the company actually tries to sell that asset.

Looking at the big picture, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke basically stated at a meeting in London a few months back that as long as the presence of all these toxic assets have the propensity to lose its underlying value banks are at risk of more contradictions and the confidence of investors will remain skeptical. Therefore banks will continue to be conservative and lending constrained. President Obama may have eluded to his impending action as he stated in a recent interview with Matt Lauer of NBC when he stated that "...some banks won't make it!."

Getting back to Mark-to-market...in my research I found the perfect example in a recent Forbes article;
As a Rod Sterling monologue would always start, Picture this....you a typical homeowner in a bustling suburb south of Atlanta. You have a spouse, two kids and a $200,000 mortgage on a $300,000 house that you planned on residing in for next 20 years. Now picture your neighbor, a cancer patient needing money for a major operation...sells his house for $150,000. Okay, now imagine that your banker said you had to mark to this "new market" and fork over to the bank $80,000 in cash immediately (so you would have 20% down) or lose your home. Yes, you have just entered the Twilight Zone and although this may not be reflective of a real life scenario, but if it were true...Would this create absolute mayhem?

So what's happening is that investors are facing risks that have nothing to do with asset quality but are questionable because of this accounting principal. As mentioned earlier, also exacerbating the situation are short sellers using capital requirements as leverage to drive down the price of assets and creating a fire sale environment. It it starting to make sense to you? Well, I always suggest that you do your own research. The big question is that could this change actually bring a bottom to the market's downward spiral. Well it at least sounds to me like a great starting point for at least some discussion and further consideration by our country's experts. I'm also more interested in the probability of this proposal because it involves less government intrusion and intervention.

On the other hand, (of course, I will always try and present all sides) I know that there will also be opponents to suspending this rule. In some instances, I also see how it works. Further, what would be an effective replacement? Well, as a real estate professional and not an economist or accountant, I don't have the answer and I hope that I presented a good enough scenario for readers to get a grasp of what is going on. The complexity of some of these financial issues are difficult for the average person to understand. Accounting principles, derivatives, and of course all these financial products. However I am astute enough to see sufficient evidence that suggest that Accounting seems to be more reflective of Art than Science.

Hey Peachtree City...are you guys able to keep track of all the new legislation, regulations and other recent changes? Yeah, it's becoming pretty esoteric, right? However, I agree with Warren Buffet that we should support our President and the current economic policies. It's just these new changes have added a cataclysmic amounts of information to absorb, review, and evaluate on top of all the gloom and doom we are inundated with day in and day out by our new media. My brain is fried, my house in under water, and my finances could use some bailing out!

But there is still hope and plenty of money out there to be made....right? Heck, the last estimate I read had the world's total wealth at $100 trillion dollars! Yipee..its not like there is only a few loaves of bread and some fish left to feed us all.

However, according to the Asian Development Bank and a report from the World Economic Forum the global financial crisis has destroyed about half of the world's wealth. That's $50 trillion dollars....cha-ching gone! I know that type of gone sounds more like in an alien abduction. But, all this tends to make me pause and ask the question, "So What is the ultimate fate of our dollar?"

Hmmm...How about let's start out with the question we all have, "Who or what is backing all those George
Washingtons?" Well...Money as we know it today is not backed up by anything more than a promise from Uncle Sam. How did this come to be? Read on folks! We all know that centuries ago commerce relied upon precious metals such as gold and silver as the medium for barter and exchange. It's also a fact that the almighty dollar was once back by gold and silver. More on that later.

If you go back and check, historically during times of war, nations would take their currency off the gold standard and then inflate the money supply in order to finance the huge expenses of war. At the end of the wars money would go back to a gold standard. That is until the end of World War II. After WWII, the United States emerged as a real super power having established itself as having the strongest economy in the world. The U.S. not only was the sole possessor of the "bomb" but it produced half of the world's coal and electricity. From a financial perspective, the US held a majority of investment capital, was a powerhouse in manufacturing, and over 65% of the world's total gold reserves was owned by the USA.

Then came the United Nations Monetary & Financial Conference better know as the Bretton-Woods conference held in New Hampshire in 1944. A new relationship between gold and paper was established, (among a number of things) and a system of exchange rate management was set up and remained in place until the early 1970's. The currency of the United States being the prominent world power, become the reserve currency of the world as the Franc was devalued and the exchange rate for the dollars was redeemable in gold to the amount of $35 per ounce.

That system, and U.S. power, stabilized the world's monetary system and allowed for an unprecedented surge of prosperity. But the system failed in the late '60s when costs for the Vietnam War flooded the world with tons of American dollars. Foreign governments balked at holding those dollars at an artificially fixed rate. Consequently, foreign nations began to value gold more than the dollar due to the fundamentals of supply and demand. As a result, the gold reserves of the US began to dwindle.

In 1971 the US noticed such run on gold and if continued at that rate, the entire U.S. gold reserves would be depleted. Circa August 15, 1971, ( a year prior to the Watergate break-in) President Richard M. Nixon unilaterally "closed the gold window," making the dollar nonconvertible to gold directly, except on the open market. This effectively severed any last remnant of paper money being backed up by gold. All currencies were said to "float" against one another from this time forward. Fast forward to May 23, 2006, our US government announced that it would cease to publish the M3 money supply figures. Hmmm..Was it because someone knew that massive amounts of monies would have to be created to fund the increasing trade and federal budget deficits? Maybe a stock market crash could be predicted? Hyper-inflation? Just food for thought!

So how does gold look these days against the dollar? Well, since the beginning of 2009, the dollar has gained 9.5% against the euro and 2.3% against the pound. Gold in dollar terms, is up 9.4%. At the time I am writing this blog, gold was at $977 an ounce. It is becoming obvious that the rise in gold prices may be signaling that the dollar's rally is not going to continue. Maybe it's like Voltaire stated that Paper money, is intrinsically worthless. Many paper currencies have failed altogether, and the two most successful currencies the world has ever known, the British pound and the American dollar, have both seen their purchasing power erode approximately 95% over the last century.

At present there are 176 currencies in circulation in the world. The median age for all existing currencies in circulation is only 39 years. Under the US Mint Act of 1792, which established the dollar as the currency of the US and created the decimal system for currency, the dollar was defined as 371.25 grains of silver. There are 480 grains in a troy ounce. Thus it took 1.3 US dollars to purchase a single troy ounce of pure silver. As of the beginning of 2009, the price of a troy ounce of silver is $11.22, representing a 89.5% drop in value!

So what about our monetary base? Okay to begin, the monetary base is comprised of currency in circulation and the commercial banks' reserves with the central bank. Recently, there have been unprecedented increases to the bank reserve portion of the US monetary base. Up until August 2008, the portion of the monetary base that consisted of bank reserves was between 8% - 12%. In December 2008, that proportion had risen to 47%! This drastic increase was due largely in part by the unwillingness of the banks to lend. Remember, TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) was enacted in October of 2008. 442 institutions received almost $200 billion dollars!

The greatest risk at present is that the magnitude of the latest efforts to stabilize the system may destroy public confidence in paper money, thereby sparking the phenomenon of hyperinflation. So what is hyperinflation....It is the total meltdown of a currency system. As the Feds continue to print out money to be sold as treasury notes the actual dollar is weakened by inflation. At some point it can be assumed that entities may sell off the dollar before it gets completely devalued.

Some experts say the bottom is nearing as the market dropped below 6500 on its way to predicted 5000. Other experts expect gold to go up in proportion to the dollar's downward spiral. What will happen to the dollar still remains to be seen but one thing I can say with certainty....throughout history gold and silver have always been the last man standing.

Hey Peachtree City...can you smell it in the air??? No...Sinuses again, huh? Okay I'm talking about Spring! Come on this is Georgia folks, we just had our snow and we are looking at a beautiful and sunny 75 degree weekend. We all can use the vitamin D folks! Well, if you hadn't recognized it yet then I can't suspect that you've recognized your W-2 in that huge pile of mail on your counter....Yes now you've got it. It's tax time again, hurrah! So long, bulky coats, ugly boots & mercilessly dry skin! Hello, Spring & tax season!

Alright...if you are like me getting organized for my CPA can be a pain in the butt. Especially with collecting and keeping up with all those receipts. Every year I keep saying that I am going to come up with a better system. Oh you too? There is help...and we don't even have to go see Oprah either!

The solution may be to check out one of those services that organize all your receipts for you. Yeah...that's the ticket. May I suggest shoving your receipts in an envelope or just leaving them in your shoebox and mail them to pixily.com. Pixily.com is an on-demand document management service that helps you aggregate, organize, find,and share paper and electronic documents. Pretty much the service scans all your receipts and documents, then allows you to securely search for them online by date, totals, business or store name ect. How cool is that? Of course, this type of organization does come with a price but there are plans to fit your budget too!

Okay so you are on a shoe-string budget this year. Most of us are. How about scanning your own receipts with a NeatReceipts Scanner? The scanner and software combo allows you to scan in your receipts and export them to Quickbooks, Excel, Word, Money and even Acrobat. By the way, I head that its even great for storing all those business cards we can collect in a years time. The price for eradicating the clutter from your home and mind is between $150 and $250. Well worth the investment wouldn't you say?

Still a little financially challenged at this point? Okay, I'm going to give you the real low, low...how about free! Check out the Evernote application. What is Evernote? Evernote allows you to take snapshots of your receipts, track notes and ideas...even voice notes. Also for you guys with the IPhone and IPOD touch, Evernote turns them into your external brain. Why did we ever need our own? Not only that it synchronizes them to your desktop, IPhone or Ipod touch. Did I mention that it also organizes them by their appropriate IRS categories.

So now that I've pretty much taken the ax out of tax......you can spring into action with a little more pep in your step at tax time. You Accountants and CPAs will love seeing you again and who knows....maybe all this organization may be a change for the better. Okay now say it with me, "No More Shoe Boxes.!" Now let's hope Uncle Sam doesn't rain on your parade.