Nice start to August

Well toward the end of July my Unrealized Loss in my oanda account got whittled down to nothing, and today I started off the month with my first take-profit of 3.8%. Very nice.

I am adding $100 to my prosper account, will put it into loans as soon as it gets transferred. Prosper is notoriously slow in making ACH transfers. My first loan payments should be coming thru within the next 10 days so am looking forward to that.

Now, on the subject of the rich and what do they know that we don't.....

I heard something on NPR the other day that I found shocking and
appalling...

Appears there is a particular Cabinet member, last name of Leavitt,
who last year donated somewhere in the neighborhood of $400k to his
own private foundation. Took a very nice tax writeoff for the donation.

The money was funnelled to another foundation, the Southern Utah
something-or-other Foundation, which in turn chose needy scholarship
students at Southern Utah U. and paid their rent for them. Nice
enough and certainly charitable.

HOWEVER, the students were housed in apartment buildings OWNED by the
Leavitt FAMILY...........

So they donated their money, took the tax write-off, and then got the
same money back as rental income...

And guess what?? Apparently this isnt even ILLEGAL!!!! There is
something called a Type III Supporting Organization (must look further into this)
where the donor can actually get the money back in several ways,
including business dealings and taking LOANS.

So I am rich, I set up one of these foundations, I fund it with a
bunch of money that I write off on my taxes, and then I TAKE THE MONEY
RIGHT BACK AS A LOAN.......

How's that for the rich being smarter than us....

-karin


PS Full article from NPR can be found here