Investing is about making your money work for you. For many of you the latter part of 2008 and the first five and a half months of 2009 have seen you trying to salvage the funds that you worked so hard to get rather than building your wealth.

You have $1,000 cash each month that basically will be spent and you will have nothing to show for it. You have an RRSP secured by mutual funds totaling $39,000 down from original $50,000. You have been dealing with the same financial planner for years and he is a friend you don’t want to upset. Your total $40,000 is not sufficient to purchase a revenue property free and clear.

Recently, authorities have already recovered a total of nearly $2.5 billion worth of Madoff assets which if added to the Picower money will amount to almost $10 billion. This was half of the total goal money that needs to be recovered when the case is over.

Within a few weeks, calls to rebuild the gulf coast region have been mentioned by President Bush and other leading politicians and echoed throughout the media. Many have stated that we cannot allow a major American city to remain destroyed, that rebuilding must occur. At any cost at European recovery fund any price.

The first bubble recorded happened in The Netherlands in 1637. What New York is to Wall Street, The Netherlands is to Tulips. Amsterdam is home to “The Tulip Exchange”.

So are we in the eye of the storm or are we really on the verge of breaking through to a full economic recovery? Like predicting the path of a storm, economists can’t agree on the direction of the economy. Economic models show one way and another reality emerges.

You don’t have the power to take addiction away from your loved one, but you do have the power to give him a good push toward help. You can get educated on addiction, talk to doctors, and find a good treatment program. Once you’re ready, you can gather family and friends together and hold an intervention. You can give him an ultimatum.

In all of 2009, nominal GDP was essentially zero, although it rose to 5.7% in Q4. It decelerated in Q1 2010 to 2.7%, and the forecast for the remainder of 2010 is lower. Nominal US GDP declined 1.9% in 2008, the biggest decline since 1946. It had previously risen 2.1% in 2007, which was already anemic.