The Word For Today

Thursday, 3 September 2015

"Go on a Complaining Fast"

‘… do not complain …’. (James 5:9 NCV)

Whatever you keep doing becomes a habit. That’s why James says, ‘… do not complain …’ Author Jon Gordon says, ‘A complaining fast won’t just make everyone around you happier … you’ll experience more joy, peace, success and positive relationships.’ So instead of complaining when things go wrong: 
1) Practice gratitude.   Giving thanks for three blessings every day energizes you and makes you feel happier.   It’s impossible to be grateful and negative at the same time. 
2) Encourage others.  Instead of complaining about what people do wrong, focus on what they’re doing right.    ‘…encourage … people who are afraid. Help those who are weak.  Be patient with everyone’ (1 Thessalonians 5:14 NCV).   It’s okay to criticize people’s weaknesses as long as you balance it with three times more praise. 
3) Focus on your success.  Start a success journal.   Every night before you go to bed, write down something great about your day.    It could be an uplifting conversation … or an accomplishment you’re proud of. There’s truth to the old saying, ‘Nothing succeeds like success'.   When you focus on success you set the stage for more to follow. 
4) Learn to let go.  Instead of obsessing about what you can’t change, focus on what you can influence.   When you stop trying to control everything and place your life in God’s hands, things have a way of working out. 
5) Use the power of prayer.  Paul says, ‘…pray … on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests …’ (Ephesians 6:18 NIV).   Prayer reduces stress, boosts positive energy, and promotes health. When you’re under pressure, instead of complaining, plug into God’s power and recharge your batteries. Amen.‎

Chinese rushing into physical gold in huge volume as stocks crash

A simple truth;

Owning paper “Gold ETF’s” or “Gold Certificates” is like holding a receipt for a parachute

in a crashing plane.

Posted on 23 June 2015

The first signs of a rush to convert financial assets into physical gold in China have emerged with a spike in physical gold payouts at the Shanghai gold exchanges.

Withdrawals of physical gold from the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Shanghai International Gold Exchange jumped 41 percent in the trading week 8-12th June from the previous week, while year-to-date withdrawals are up 20 per cent to an incredible 1,061 tones.

Massive rotation

To put that figure into perspective, that is higher than China’s entire last officially declared gold reserve. It represents a massive conversion of paper assets into bars of the precious metal.

The 8-12th June gold rush came before the Shanghai Composite began to sell-off late last week, quickly entering a bear market with stocks down more than 20 percent. How much paper gold trading has been converted into the physical stuff in this market collapse?

The shift into physical gold earlier this month looks like the smart money getting out ahead of the herd. But where else can Chinese investors park their cash in an emergency?

Their fear must surely be that another deluge of money printing will be the response of the authorities. Chinese inflation has already been epic since the global financial crisis and the money printing that followed, just go there and buy things to find out.

Bubble profits

Indeed the stock market bubble itself is a product of money printing. Investors wishing to protect themselves from the next blast of inflation, or actually to profit from it are buying gold.

How long before this begins to affect headline gold prices? Surely as the stock market tanks we will not have to wait until the next batch of figures confirms what was happening in early June.

http://www.arabianmoney.net/gold-silver/2015/06/23/chinese-rushing-into-physical-gold-in-huge-volume-as-stocks-crash/

FB new payment options

Facebook Messenger Adds Peer-to-Peer Payments Feature

SOCIAL

• 
• By Kurt Wagner
• @KurtWagner8
• EMAIL
• ETHICS

March 17, 2015, 12:00 PM PDT

SHARE:

Facebook users can now send money to one another through the company’s standalone messaging app, Messenger.

The long-rumored product was unveiled Tuesday, and lets users tie their debit card to their Facebook account in order to pass money through messaging. The Messenger app now includes a small “$” icon above the keyboard which opens a payments screen where users can type the amount they wish to send.

The money is then transferred through Facebook, which holds the money for “seconds” before sending it along to the other user’s bank, according to Facebook product manager Steve Davis. If the recipient doesn’t have a card attached to his or her account, Facebook will hold the money until they’ve set one up.

The new product makes Facebook an instantaneous competitor to other peer-to-peer payments companies like Venmo, Square and even Snapchat, which rolled out a similar pay-through-text service in November called Snapcash.

“We realized that there were all these conversations [on Messenger] that were forced to go somewhere else in order to actually finish,” Davis said. “You had to go to another platform to actually pay another person.”

Unlike Snapchat, which partnered with Square to handle the actual money transfers, Facebook built its entire system in-house. That means that debit card info will be housed on Facebook servers.

The company has stored data like this for years already when people pay for games or gifts through the platform. Messenger payments are a good way to get more debit cards on file in case Facebook does decide to expand further into commerce later on; the company is already partnering with Stripe to power the Buy button, and that test is likely to expand.