There are many kinds of insurance services that we should get to protect our finance. One of the most important insurance services is the life insurance service. It would be the most important one because it would provide the excellent financial protection for the family while were gone. That is why, considering that it would be the most important insurance service that we should have to protect the family’s future after our departure, we should choose the best one.

There are lots of considerations that we should use before we chose some of those life insurance service offers. First of all, we should make sure that we would have some chances to find the life insurance service that would give us the low insurance rate. We should get it to avoid some sorts of heavy monthly burdens that might happen to our finance.

The next considerations would be the life insurance quotes. We should make sure that the insurance quotes would cover the whole things that we needed to be protected. To get some further information about the rates and the quotes, perhaps we should consider of clicking the Lifeinsurancerates.com. This is the perfect site to learn more about the life insurance services.

With the current economic downturn there are challenges and there always opportunities. The biggest challenge when one is displaced or loses his or her job is: What am I going to do? It is a question I hear a great deal. Very often, the answer to the challenge is to start your own business.

You can read a mountain of information that will tell you about starting your own business. And, that is good. Yet, regardless of how much you read and learn starting your own business and running your own business present their own unique challenges.

Challenge #1: Do you have a market for the product or service you wish to provide?

Too often it is easy to fake yourself out by thinking that your passion and enthusiasm for a product or service will make you successful. Passion and enthusiasm are important ingredients in the success process but they are not a guaranty. Your first step is to know if you have a good market.

Challenge #2: Is the market I wish to pursue vulnerable to economic cycles?

If your product or service falls more into the category of being a “want” rather than a “need” then you are increasing your risk of failure. This is particularly true in less than robust economic times.

Challenge #3: What should I get into when in an economic downturn?

Answer #1: Honor “who” you are.

This is one of the key elements to doing well personally and professionally. One of the most critical elements of success is to be doing something that you like. You should be doing something in alignment with “who” you are. Burnout and ultimately failure, even if you are doing well for a while, will come if you are not doing something that gives you satisfaction and is in alignment with “who” you are.

Answer #2: Let your imagination loose.

This could be your time to pursue your passion or dream. Don’t be bound by your education or your past. Use your past as a school to go back to and learn from. Don’t use it as a prison to keep you from the future you desire. Question what worked. What didn’t work?

Take some time to get reacquainted with yourself. Journal about what you want. Talk with others about your dreams. Get anchored in who you are.

Answer #3: Get into a service that is needed.

An example would be cleaning services that cater to business. Cleaning must go on regardless of cycles. Yes, there is a lot of competition. But, your new business can have a great number of advantages because it is not carrying high overhead or doing business in a manner that reflects a high economic cycle that no longer exists.

Cutting back is one of the most difficult aspects for a larger or established company. Very likely, you are in a position to provide the same or better service and at lower cost.

And here’s another point about the cleaning business. It is for the most part, low cost and easy to enter. It doesn’t take a lot of expertise. And, I can assure you that it can be very profitable.

Answer #4: If you have a particular area of expertise, find out where jobs are being cut in a particular industry where you may be of service.

In times of economic downturn employees are being laid off. But, the work still needs to be done in some form or fashion. There just isn’t as much of it. Very often, these companies look more favorably to outsource this work. And you may be in a position to offer quality and save them money.

Answer #5: Provide a product or service that is needed and where you can save a company or individuals a significant amount of money.

Quality is always important but during economic downturns keeping costs to a minimum is king. A great example of a product and service combined that will save you a lot of money is Magic Jack. After initial set up your phone costs are around $19.00 per year. That’s amazing. Yes, there is a lot of technology behind it but look for something that is needed and how you can deliver a better product or service at a lower price.

Challenge #4: What should I stay away from?

Be careful with multi-level businesses. Why? Many of them provide great products. The question is: Are the products necessary? Will the products truly save the customers money? If the answer is yes, then I would strongly consider it.

And, I would consider it if you are willing to contact a lot of people to make it work. But, during these economic times, if the products don’t fall in the “necessary” category you should be more inclined to spend your time and energy elsewhere.

Stay away from get rich quick or businesses where it seems that you will have success overnight. Most of the advertising and promotion you read is based on someone’s true success story. The piece that is missing is the percentage of people who undertook a particular venture and made it financially viable to where it could support them. Usually, this percentage is very low.

Obviously, there are many answers to what business should you start. The most important thing is to ask questions of yourself. Know yourself. Know your challenges. Understand your passions. Get a clear picture of the future you want to create. Once you have a clear picture of the future you want then what you need to do in the present, to attain that future, will become clear.

The need for tax shifting – lowering income taxes while raising taxes on environmentally destructive activities – in order to get the market to tell the truth has been widely endorsed by economists. The basic idea is to establish a tax that reflects the indirect costs to society of an economic activity. For example, a tax on coal would incorporate the increased health care costs associated with breathing polluted air, the costs of damage from acid rain, and the costs of climate disruption.
Nine countries in Western Europe have already begun the process of tax shifting, known as environmental tax reform. The amount of revenue shifted thus far is small, just a few percent. But enough experience has been gained to know that it works.
Among the activities taxed in Europe are carbon emissions, emissions of heavy metals, and the generation of garbage (so-called landfill taxes). The Nordic countries, led by Sweden, pioneered tax shifting at the beginning of the 1990s. By 1999 a second wave of tax shifting was under way, this one including the larger economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Tax shifting does not change the level of taxes, only their composition. One of the better known changes was a four-year plan adopted in Germany in 1999 to shift taxes from labor to energy. By 2001, this had lowered fuel use by 5 percent. A tax on carbon emissions adopted in Finland in 1990 lowered emissions there 7 percent by 1998.
Environmental tax reform is spreading, with the reform process now under way in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The United States imposed a stiff tax on chlorofluorocarbons to phase them out in accordance with the Montreal Protocol of 1987. At the local level, the city of Victoria, British Columbia, adopted a trash tax of $1.20 per bag of garbage, reducing its daily trash flow 18 percent within one year.
One of the newer taxes gaining in popularity is the so-called congestion tax. City governments are turning to a tax on vehicles picture of urban traffic entering the city, or at least the inner part of the city where traffic congestion is most serious. In London, where the average speed of an automobile was 9 miles per hour – about the same as a horse-drawn carriage – a congestion tax was adopted in early 2003. The $8 charge on all motorists driving into the center of the city between 7am and 6:30pm immediately reduced the number of vehicles by 24 percent, permitting traffic to flow more freely while cutting pollution and noise.
Environmental tax shifting usually brings a double dividend. In reducing taxes on income – in effect, taxes on labor – labor becomes less costly, creating additional jobs while protecting the environment. This was the principal motivation in the German four-year shift of taxes from income to energy. The shift from fossil fuels to more energy-efficient technologies and to renewable sources of energy reduces carbon emissions and represents a shift to more labor-intensive industries. By lowering the air pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes, it also reduces respiratory illnesses, such as asthma and emphysema, and health care costs – a triple dividend.
When it comes to reflecting the value of nature’s services, ecologists can, for example, calculate the values of services that a forest in a given location provides. Once picture of logging operation these are determined, they can be incorporated into the price of trees as a stumpage tax of the sort that Bulgaria and Lithuania have adopted. Anyone wishing to cut a tree would have to pay a tax equal to the value of the services provided by that tree. The market would then be telling the truth. The effect of this would be to reduce tree cutting, since forest services may be worth several times as much as the timber, and to encourage wood and paper recycling.
Some 2,500 economists, including eight Nobel Prize winners in economics, have endorsed the concept of tax shifts. Former Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who was nominated to be Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in early 2003, wrote in Fortune magazine: “Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming – all without jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency. This may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer.” Mankiw could also have added that it would reduce the military expenditures associated with ensuring access to Middle Eastern oil.
The Economist has recognized the advantage of environmental tax shifting and endorses it strongly: “On environmental grounds, never mind energy security, America taxes gasoline too lightly. Better than a one-off increase, a politically more feasible idea, and desirable in its own terms, would be a long-term plan to shift taxes from incomes to emissions of carbon.” In Europe and the United States, polls indicate that at least 70 percent of voters support environmental tax reform once it is explained to them.
Subsidies, which are essentially “negative taxes,” also must be reformed. Each year the world’s taxpayers underwrite $700 billion of subsidies for environmentally destructive activities, picture of oil rig such as burning fossil fuels, over-pumping aquifers, clear-cutting forests, and overfishing. A 1997 Earth Council study, Subsidizing Unsustainable Development, observes that “there is something unbelievable about the world spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to subsidize its own destruction.”
Subsidies are not inherently bad. Many technologies and industries were born of government subsidies. Jet aircraft were developed with military R&D expenditures, leading to modern commercial airliners. The Internet was a result of publicly funded efforts to establish links between computers in government laboratories and research institutes. And the combination of the federal tax incentive and a robust state tax incentive in California gave birth to the modern wind power industry.
But just as there is a need for tax shifting, there is also a need for subsidy shifting. A world facing the prospect of economically disruptive climate change, for example, can no longer justify subsidies to expand the burning of coal and oil. Shifting these subsidies to the development of climate – benign energy sources such as wind power, solar power, and geothermal power is the key to stabilizing the earth’s climate. Shifting subsidies from road construction to rail construction could increase mobility in many situations while reducing carbon emissions.
In a troubled world economy facing fiscal deficits at all levels of government, exploiting tax and subsidy shifts with their double and triple dividends can help balance the books and save the environment. Tax and subsidy shifting promise both gains in economic efficiency and reductions in environmental destruction, a win-win situation.
History judges political leaders by whether they respond to the great issues of their time. For today’s leaders, that issue is how to deflate the world’s bubble economy before it bursts. This bubble threatens the future of everyone, rich and poor alike. It challenges us to restructure the global economy, to build an eco-economy.
The choice is ours – yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over a global bubble economy that keeps expanding until it bursts, leading to economic decline. Or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that stabilizes population, eradicates poverty, and stabilizes climate. Historians will record the choice, but it is ours to make

 

                                         State of Emergency: Economics and Accounting

 

During this time of transition between the 43rd and 44th President of the United States, I have decided to focus on how the current state of Economics is affecting the Accounting world.  If you have been under a rock for 8 years then you need to know that the current state of finances and economies are in disarray. The U.S alone has faced the highs and lows of the stock market. The housing market is unstable with big mortgage lenders folding and being sold to other banks and competitors.  The American auto industry is on hands and knees at the feet of Congress hoping to grab a piece of the nearly 800 million dollar bailout plan earmarked for the struggling economy. We have just had a historical election for the 44th president of the U.S but already the honeymoon is over. President –elect Barack Obama has assembled an economic team to ensure stability before he is even inaugurated.  President Bush is not a popular figure in America partly because of the economic crisis. According to Congressman Barney Frank (D-Ma), Bush has not supported the economic help, opting instead to let it run its course.

 

 “I am pleased that President-elect Obama has made the appointment of an economic team as one of his first moves.  This sets the stage for badly overdue decisive action to provide the economic help the Bush Administration has refused to support.” -Congressman Frank. [1]

 

Accounting is a gigantic part of economics. Many of the companies that are staples of the American economy and economies worldwide use GAAP. GAAP is a monogram for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and these principles translate to every company that uses accounting methods to keep track of money inflows and outflows. (Revenues and Costs)  Accounting GAAP is governed by the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) which has the authority to set and enact all accounting standards by the Securities Exchange Commission.   Although it is not a public organization, the FASB is respected by the SEC and U.S government because they believe the private sector knows best and has the best resources.  These GAAP and FASB led accounting principles have been a mainstay for a while but now have a replacement. The IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) have been adopted by more than 100 countries around the world including the majority of Europe.[2] The United States is the next company to adopt these standards with the earliest start date in 2010.  This gives the U.S plenty of time to make sure that all companies are reporting finances correctly so there will be no more Enron’s or MCI WorldCom’s left undiscovered.  The new IFRS standards will have every company that reports in the U.S give the same information that they might withhold in another country’s reporting standard. This also is easier on the economy as we move into a more global market. 

 

The old standards that we are using will not track today’s economy very well. When the GAAP and other accounting principles were developed, society was built on tangible assets and contributions that were seen and written off.  Today’s economy is more information based and thriving off of intangible assets such as: ideas, brands, ways of working, and franchises.  These intangible assets are not being assessed the same by GAAP and other principles anymore.  Companies are benefiting from a missing link between concrete finances and the Information age.  The gap affects more than just financial analysts and financial officers. Employees don’t know how to value their contributions correctly. Managers don’t have high-quality numbers to refer to when deciding whether to back a project, or when assessing a project’s performance.  Companies however are getting caught with their hands in the proverbial “cookie jar” trying to maximize revenues when their books have no semblance of accountability. 

 

Hopefully with the advent of the IFRS, there can be a change in how Accounting relates to the current economy.  The information age should be able to ensure that Accounting stay relevant by making sure these intangible assets are valued correctly.  Accounting is making changes along with the economy to become better suited at keeping the accountability and integrity of companies intact.  Barack Obama is doing his due diligence as president –elect at this time as well.  He is not only showing the American people that he is here to fix the economic problems that plague the U.S, but also the world.  In this time of a global market, it is important that companies here and abroad are keeping the books and finances straight to make sure jobs are prevalent in each economy. Goods and services are the backbone of any economy, and to make sure that the economy stays intact, there must be Accountability.  Accounting will not let us down.

 

The Taxpayer’s Dozen

There are 12 areas of the economic stimulus package plan:Tax relief, child tax credit, jobless benefits, health care, energy, education, infrastructure, science and technology, law enforcement, jump start on jobs, business breaks and accountability. To Democrats, this plan represents stabilizing the economy where it will see the most progress – helping people help themselves. To Republicans, it is perceived as a huge loss of revenue where it will do big business and the military, two areas upon which Republicans base their version of financial stability.

A Networked Plan of Economic Stimulus

Unlike prior economic stimulus plans, i.e., millions to big business in 2001, tax cuts for the richest 1% and $350 billion to the bailout financial institutions, the Obama plan gets to the heart of why all other plans have failed…excising the middle class from benefiting in equal proportion. In the Obama plan, every area is carefully networked so that the results stabilize working class Americans. The middle class during the took several simultaneous hits taxes that incurred further debt, taxes on consumables and taxes that trickled down to create higher state income and property taxes. Allowing Americans to keep an additional $500-1,000 of their income reduces the burden of eroding paychecks and increasing costs of living. With added help from the child tax credit, working parents get to keep more of their hard-earned incomes if their salaries are under the $150,000 cap. So, the first two areas begin to immediately relieve the economic balloon about to burst from pressure of too many taxes at too high a rate. For those who are jobless as a result of economic layoff or job evaporation, the additional aid to jobless benefits may stave off the increase in the number of people living below the poverty level. Science &Technology, Law Enforcement, Jump Starting Jobs, Business breaks and accountability fit well into this network as definitely doable and pragmatic.

The Big Four of the Economic Stimulus Plan

There are 4 very big areas of this plan: Health care, energy, education and infrastructure. Health care, unless it is totally revamped will affect the outcome of all 11 related parts of this plan. Health care is unaffordable not only for average Americans but for business as well. Until that issue is resolved, none of the other areas of the plan can work. No job will be secure if health care continues to spiral out of control. No business will take the chance of hiring more employees they know will jeopardize the health care benefits of their existing staff. And, until age discrimination is resolved with regard to HMOs, older Americans who want to work past retirement will be considered undesirable and costly. The cost of education will increase as a result of increasing costs of benefits for education employees. Any revenues freed for other parts of the plan will be eroded by the cost of health care. Health care costs must be reined in before issuing revenue to education, energy and infrastructure. To overlook the ramifications of unaffordable health care is a serious loophole in the fabric of the economic stimulus plan.

For more information on the economic stimulus package, visit http://www.stimulus2.com.

 

            On the last Saturday of April, World Tai Chi & Qigong Day will expand across hundreds of cities in over 65 nations and all 50 US states. It may offer something that can profoundly benefit our national and global economy. How?

The Chinese character for “crisis” is made up of two other characters, “danger,” and “opportunity.”

            If we let it, this economic crisis can enable a paradigm shift that will not only create a much more balanced and sane world, but also ensure a sustainable and enjoyable planet for our children and grandchildren’s children.

            Unknown to most of us, our planet has been severely “out of balance” for a long long time. Traditional Chinese Medicine has for millennia extolled the need for balance to ensure health, individual health, community health, and global health.

            What do I mean “out of balance”?, you may ask. I\’ll explain. My wife is from Hong Kong, while I grew up in a fairly affluent time in Western Kansas.  We weren’t rich or even upper middle class, but even in our blue collar world we had plenty, never went hungry, and took long road trips on cheap fuel whenever my father had time off.

            What I didn’t know, was that on the other side of the planet, a young girl I would one day marry was experiencing a world where resources were very precious. My parents understood that, from their experiences in the Great Depression.  However, I thought their views were out dated, and when I eventually met and married my wife, Angela Wong, I thought her views were not relevant to our modern world either.

            Angela, like my parents, extolled me not to “waste.”  Not to waste energy, fuel, paper towels, anything. She taught me that everything we consume is a precious commodity. I laughed at her for decades.

            I am no longer laughing.  I am changed.  Since the initial stunning collapse of much of our economy a few months ago, I now tear a tiny corner off of a paper towel to wipe up a small spill rather than use an entire paper towel. I have a Prius hybrid, and I play the game of seeing just how much road miles I can squeeze out of every gallon of gas. I’ve double paned our windows, and insulated our house, and bought energy saving appliances, and light bulbs. I no longer leave a door open when the heater or air conditioner are on, and have learned to live warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter.

            I am not miserable, or living less really, I’m just challenged to be efficient. I am growing from this experience.  I am evolving into a new person, a better conscious person. This crisis has been an opportunity, which I was propelled to by a danger of economic stress.

            From talking to friends, I believe there are millions, perhaps tens of millions of Americans doing the same thing now. So, when I make one paper towel do what ten paper towels did before, I “became aware,” I know that tens of millions of paper towels are being saved across our nation. Tens of millions of gallons of gas are being conserved.

            For decades half of the planet has been living at or near starvation wages.  Why?  When the wealth of some nations pulls resources out of poor nations like a sucking magnet, there are none left for locals.  When I was young, my father worked with a Mexican man who’d come from a part of Mexico that had grown water melons to export to America.  All his life in Mexico he’d never tasted water melon, until his arrival in America as a young adult.

            As fuel becomes expensive, long range exports become less attractive. Local lands in poor nations can possibly be more geared toward local populations nourishment, as we in developed wealthy nations again become accustomed to seasonal diets on locally produced produce.

            However, the fuel crisis can also spur a massive investment privately and publicly toward green, cheap renewable solar-wind type energies. This technology can then be exported to the world, to a China hungry for energy, for example.

            Our environment is in dire straights. Few people deny this any longer. A tipping point approaches, and if we do not radically move from fossil fuels (oil/coal) to renewables (wind, tide, solar), we may damage our ecosystem beyond the point of repair. Anyone who is conscious knows the weather has changed from when we were children. A point may come where that change escalates painfully worldwide.

            This time of economic “crisis” is dangerous, but sewn within it may be the opportunity to catapult the global economy to cheap renewable energy.  Because in the end it will be much cheaper, not only in the energy production, but the maintenance of the system, and the lack of environmental disasters and clean ups that other energy involves.

            Health care is another area that is set to experience a paradigm shift.  Current trends project that in coming years the United States annual health costs will exceed $4 trillion per year. This is unsustainable, and will bankrupt our nation, if left unchanged.

            However, it is changing us. We all have experienced outrageous insurance costs, and had to fight to get medical bills covered even if we are insured. We’ve seen health professionals set us on very expensive, and not always effective treatment protocols for our long term health.

            At the same time emerging research, and our personal experiences, are enlightening us about complimentary and alternative health solutions that can address many of the most common, and socially most expensive health challenges.

            Research has shown that Tai Chi, Yoga, and Meditation can lower high blood pressure, help with chronic pain and mobility problems, decrease depression, anxiety, ADHD, and mood disorder conditions. Type 2 Diabetes can be treated with Tai Chi and heart disease as well, according to emerging research.  A UCLA controlled study found that Tai Chi increased participants resistance to viral infection by 50%, and in another study found Tai Chi improved sleep quality in 65% of participants.  How much money is spent inoculating people, or treating flu victims?  How much business productivity is lost due to colds and flu that could have been avoided by inexpensive mind/body training? How much is spent on drugs for anxiety, depression, and sleep loss

            When spending $10 or $20 a week learning Tai Chi or Yoga can save us thousands or tens of thousands in future health costs, and our wallets grow increasingly thin . . . the options become ever more appealing

            A twenty year study by Kaiser Permenente found that between 70 to 85% of all illness sending patients to their doctors were caused by stress, not aggravated by stress, but CAUSED by stress.  As our corporations learn that by including mind/body health into corporate wellness can save each company tens of thousands of saved health insurance and lost productivity dollars, things shift.

            When our education system begins to teach mind/body health tools to our 90 million students, we will begin to see trillions in future annual health spending saved. This is a wonderful opportunity, propelled forward by an economic crisis.

            Without the economic crisis, we would likely have staggered along relying on drug and surgery as our first line of health defense, rather than as a last line of defense, opting first for natural mind/body training that can actually heal these problems rather than just reducing symptoms.

            This time of crisis is actually an age of opportunity.  The question is, will we take this opportunity to change, or will we grit our teeth and grip onto old arcane ways of living, that are constipating the birth of a new way, a new world?

            The ancient Chinese Yin Yang symbol, if you look within the white dots and black dots, hold smaller yin yangs, and so on and so on.  This symbolized that our bodies function can be seen in the collaboration of cells in the body, and our society’s function or health is reflected in the body’s health and function.  What does this mean to our modern society?

            In Tai Chi or Qigong practice, we learn that the tension in our mind, heart, and body restricts blood flow, energy flow, immune cells distribution, nutrient distribution, etc.  So, when we “tighten up” around old thoughts, fears, hatreds, prejudices, patterns, all our body\’s vital flowing functions tighten up and restrict the ability of all our systems to maximize health.

           A Tai Chi or Qigong practitioner breathes deeply, and envisions “letting go” of “old rigidities” we’ve collected so that we can open, and flow into a newer healthier, more expansive paradigm of health.  By “loosening up” our mental, emotional, and physical being, we can allow it to re-form into the most optimum state to maximize our health.

           Our local, national, and global society is being challenged right now to re-form into a newer evolving self image that will nurture our people, our planet, and our emerging reforming economy.  If we tighten up around old patterns, fears, prejudices, etc. like our body’s tend to do, we will constipate our ability to open to the flow leading us to the most optimum future possible.

           As hundreds of millions worldwide open to mind/body techniques to maximize their health, and minimize their health costs, they will experience a “side-effect.”  Not the negative kind of side effect we see in drug ads on TV, but another side effect pregnant with possibility.

          As these hundreds of millions of people “loosen” their grip on the old rigid thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, their communities and nations too will loosen their grip on old wasteful economic policies. The nutrients of raw materials on an over populated planet, will begin to flow to technologies and production that will maximize effect, while minimizing cost.

          New industries will bloom that will take free sunshine and free wind, and power cars and industry with it and increasingly lower costs.  Labor may find gainful employment in fields that nurture health and wellbeing in society, rather than unabashed consumerism for the sake of consumerism and profit.  We may find that these new industries not only do not damage our societies or eco-systems, but rather nurture it on many levels.

          For example, Tai Chi, Qigong, and Meditation teachers are a labor intensive industry that spreads out wealth across communities worldwide, rather than focusing profits in the hands of tiny pharmaceutical distributions points.  The result will be more vibrant, healthier, more creative populations who ripple out economic innovation and benefit throughout their communities in a very de-centralized way. 

          This will benefit the ecosystem. Why?  A Kansas City Star article a few years back pointed out that the largest polluter of the Missouri River was pharmaceuticals, not from industry, but from human waste run off.  As people turn to mind/body health solutions, they will not only spread wealth across the economy, but reduce pollution problems.

          Mind/body tools also reduce violent and aberrant behaviors in practitioners according to studies, and in fact the calming effect they promote seems to spread out through larger populations around them, as was demonstrated in a large Transcendental Meditation study in Washington DC in the early 1990s.  In this study an influx of TM Meditators actually lowered the violent crime rate of the entire city.

          Given that the United States now imprisons more people than any nation on the planet, spending untold hundreds of billions annually on police, courts, and penal systems, such a side effect of mind/body training of our people, can dramatically save on these costs as well.

          Our economic crisis does present a danger if we lock up our mind, heart, and body around old patterns. However, as the Chinese symbol tells us, it also offers us great opportunity to move into a new paradigm of humanity that will nurture us all and our precious planet for generations to come. We know that bad patterns are passed down through family’s, so as economic concerns drive our people to mind/body healing solutions, these too will influence future generations, unfolding multi-faceted benefits we cannot even imagine.

          It is time to breathe, to loosen, to change and flow into a new future of limitless possibility.  World Tai Chi & Qigong Day\’s WorldTaiChiDay.org provides you with free \”Breathing Lessons\” and more to facilitate this process.  WTCQD has offered these tools for some of the world\’s largest corporations staffs and executives, major international health insitutions and corporations, and to government worldwide as free public health services.

          And on the last Saturday of April teach-ins will be held in hundreds of cities spanning over 65 nations on 6 continents, and all 50 US states, sharing the mind/body tools that incorporate breathing, visualization, and gentle movement to relax the mind, heart and body so that it can open to vast possibility on many levels.