For this month’s charity I got something really cool. Recently I’ve had the pleasure to be part of developing a website for a children’s book by Eleanor Bartlett & Kathy Pautler, so this month I’ll be writing about the authors of “Friday a Dog’s Tale“.

BooksByEBKP.com is a the website for authors Eleanor Bartlett & Kathy Pautler featuring their newly published book “Friday a Dog’s Tale“. Books by Eleanor Bartlett & Kathy Pautler is out to promote reading to children by reading at local area schools and giving free copies of the book away. BookByEBKP.com is not for profit and all sales proceeds will be put towards ordering more books.

I am planning to read this book, but I haven’t had the chance to yet. Excuses, excuses I know. I will get around to it and I will write a blog post and review it.

Find out more about “Friday a Dog’s Tale” at BooksbyEBKP.com.

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The government has stepped in again after a chain of bailouts that included companies like AIG, Fannie May, Freddie Mac, and others that totaled about $180 billion. This time a report has said that the federal government is going to create a government entity take on bad debt from banks . After this report broke the Dow rallied over 400 points. The market has been extremely volatile this past week as the Dow went down and up by hundreds of points, just the past two days down 400 points and up 400 points. Our markets are in crisis mode and it looks like the government needed to step in to settle things. The government has stepped in multiple times now and my question now is are we solving the fundamental flaws of our financial markets or just covering them up?

Here are my 2 cents on what’s going on:

• I really hope we’re not covering up these problems and expect the government to step in every time there’s a crisis. There’s a problem with the system that needs to be fixed.
• There’s going to be good and bad times but this may signal a great time to buy stocks. There are great stocks that have been beaten down for no reason other than fear that rules the market, like some tech stocks that don’t even work off credit for example.(aapl – 134.90, rimm – 98.18, msft -25.26)
• The world markets look to be slowing and I think the US market was ahead in the slow down so the US should be the first to come out of the slump. If world markets slow I can also see money flow into the US markets.
• There are great stocks out there and if you’re in it for the long term with a good company I think it will be ok.
• If the recent dramatic drops show anything it may be a sign of a possible bottom. I’m not picking a bottom, but I personally think if you pick some good companies and buy in small portions there may be some very nice returns.
• Energy prices have a gone down significantly that will help company expenses.
• It sucks if you recently pulled your money out earlier this week cause you’re probably going to lose a lot of missing the rally that’s going on now. It was bad this week after Lehman Bros. filed bankruptcy and AIG announced it needed restructuring. It was really bad this week and I didn’t know what to do and really thought my portfolio had a chance to go to 0, but I thought I had to wait for pop before I get out.(DOW – 11,019.69 | Nasdaq – 2199.10 | S&P 500 – 1206.51)

These are my personal opinions and I’m in no way giving advice to anyone. If I’m right and buying stocks now may be very rewarding, but there are still many problems looming from the housing market and finding the future of energy. At some point the housing market has to turn around, banks will be lending money again, and our economy will be flourishing again. I really trust that the government needed to step in to prevent a catastrophe, as much as I don’t agree with it because there were obviously problems that were just overlooked that brought us to this crisis. When we see people taking out 50 year mortgages when they’re like 40 years old, why didn’t we see this crisis coming? Let’s not get into a the cycle of letting problems get out of control then beg for a government bailout.

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A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about Texas Hold’em Basics on the Tastefully Driven Blog. I’m going to a write a series of the blog post for Tastefully Driven on Texas Hold’em Poker as I try to become a better player and learn more about the game. Here’s the intro to the post:

“Poker has exploded in past few years since they started to air some big tournaments on TV and I won’t deny the hype of it because I’ve played a fair amount myself with friends and online. It’s been a while since the last time I’ve played and I was an average player at best, so I’ve decided to step my game up. More specifically I will be focusing on Texas Hold’em. I’m going to do some research to become a better poker player and share it here on the Tastefully Driven Blog. For all you beginners or those interested in getting started with Texas Hold’em poker I hope you will join me to become better poker players. “ read more…

Check out the post and the video that I cut and narrated (it’s always funny to hear yourself talk in my opinion. Do I really sound like that?). Stay tuned for the rest of my post on Texas Hold’em Poker.

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