To aid in constructing a balanced, goal-oriented approach to your individual and professional objectives, refer to the timely articles in our Newsletter Section, the interactive calculators in our Financial Tools Section, and the links to other helpful web sites.

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PERFORMANCE LINK provides a private advisory on personal financial matters such as investments, insurance, employee benefits, retirement, and estate planning.

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Our Perspective:

Continued bad news that structural unemployment in this country remains near 9% masks even worse news, because the workers who stopped looking for a job also stop buying houses amid a double dip in real-estate values. Some economists predict a triple dip, in light of the foreclosure overhang.

At the state and municipal level, where budgets must be balanced, reduced services, layoffs and tax hikes are inevitably becoming the norm. Public pension promises cannot be kept unless significant modification in funding policies, contributions, and benefits can be achieved, and that includes Social Security and especially Medicare.

The Federal Reserve may talk of the recession giving way to recovery, but the man on the street knows differently. Today's households are on a strict financial diet because they no longer can spend money they don't have. Home equity and rising stock portfolios as a source of ready cash are a memory of the past.  Looking ahead, one foresees a lowered standard of living due to debt de-leveraging and tax increases. Will there be revenue growth without a conceptual shift away from these failed methods? We think it highly unlikely.

Will there be another downturn? The stock market rallied in June, but few investors rushed to buy stocks with both hands amid August-September's turbulence.  Sluggish GDP performance, job growth that is too tiny to prevent further increases in the unemployment rate, layoffs, and firms still reluctant to hire make it tough to maintain long-term confidence that America can be rebuilt and more jobs can be created. This is especially so since consumer spending will decline as a portion of GDP for many years to come. Add to this steaming mess the Middle East social chaos and the dilemma of our federal debt only gets worse.

Entitlement programs of indefinite duration, supported by borrowed money, will increase the staggering national debt and keep us on a frightful path to eventual decline and disorder.

GLOBAL AND NATIONAL REALITIES OF DEEP CONCERN:

OLD---------------------------->        NEW

Leadership-------------------->    Blame Shifting

Transparency----------------->     Dodgeball

Housing Bubble-------------->     Government Bubble

Bailouts----------------------->    Tax Hikes

War on Terror ---------------->    Mid East Civil War

Personal Responsibility ----->     Strategic Defaults

US Bond Rating-------------->     Fiscal Emergency

Public Pensions -------------->     Public Tensions

Quantitative easing ---------->    Dollar wheezing

Recovery---------------------->    Wreckovery

Freakonomics----------------->    Bleakonomics

Bottom Up Effort ------------->    Top Down Edict

Loss of Security--------------->    Loss of Freedom

As a consequence, to protect and uphold our nation's core values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we must acknowledge this period as one of extraordinary challenge. Despite the financial scandals of Wall Street, despite inflationary dangers from money being printed by Washington, in spite of severe global political unrest and instability, we must each behave in a responsible manner in our personal and professional lives, so as to do our part for preserving national heritage and keeping our country's status as the world's beacon of freedom.  We can follow no other path, if we are to avoid descent into a morass from which no exit is possible.