Last Christmas  came and passed away leaving behind a huge debt for you as most of what you have spent on gifts and festivities were on your credit card. So have you thought about how are you going to fix the mess you have made of your finances?

It was claimed by the National Retail Federation that on average, people spend over $900 over the Christmas holiday period, and a huge part of it is on their cards. The results of this largesse are very difficult to overcome. Almost one third of people still have a credit card debt for what they have spent on the previous holiday period which they carry over into the next. According to an estimate it will take around 3 years to clear a $900 debt at 18% interest, if the minimum payments are made.

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The practice of disguising illegally obtained funds so that they seem legal is known as Money Laundering. This practice is a key of underground economy. It is defined under common law as crime. Its definition is different from its jurisdiction.

It is considered as engaging in financial transaction to hide identity or illegally obtained money.

British law defines money laundering as under,

“The act is defined as taking any action with property of any form which is either wholly or in part the proceeds of a crime that will disguise the fact that that property is the proceeds of a crime or obscure the beneficial ownership of said property.”

The money laundering was applied to financial transactions related to organized crime in the past. But now it has more wide meaning.

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Guernsey is a small island located in the English Channel. An Anglo-Norman population. This island is located closer to the French coast than to the English one.

At the close of the Napoleonic wars, the island, like several countries, was in pitiful condition, both physically and financially.

No money

Sea walls, roads, markets were needed.There was no manpower shortage. but there was no money to pay for these works.

The money used by the people on the island was the money from England, the pound sterling. But, like after any war, the financiers were calling back the money advanced to finance the slaughter, and the pounds sterling were very scarce everywhere.

The island had an autonomous government, “the States of Guernsey.” So it had the rights inherent in all sovereign government, among other rights, that of regulating the volume of money in circulation in the country. But, no more ethan any other country, the States of Guernsey had thought of exercising this sovereign prerogative.

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Credit repair is big business, and there are many companies that will promise to help you get out of bad credit problems.  There are a number of legitimate resources that can help you in improving your credit score but there are also a number of less than reputable companies out there that will take your money but offer you few (if any) valuable services.  A few basic tips will help you see the difference:

Importance of  Seeking professional help

If you are in over your head, and your credit is so bad that you cannot get a loan and may even be facing bankruptcy, you may want to seek help from professionals.  There are a number of financial professionals that can help you with credit repair:

Bankruptcy lawyers and bankruptcy advisors: Bankruptcy lawyers can help represent you in bankruptcy proceedings.  Advisors can help you decide whether to apply for a bankruptcy and how to proceed once you do decide to file.

While getting a bankruptcy lawyer and filing for bankruptcy can be upsetting and can dramatically affect your credit score for many years, it can also give you a chance to start over financially and can help you reestablish good credit again in the long run.

Credit repair companies and credit counseling companies: These companies can help you by acting on your behalf with credit companies, by advising you on what you can do to repay your bills faster, and by helping you make better financial decisions.

Accountants and tax services: Accountants and tax filing services can help you make the most of your money by making sure that you do not end up overspending on taxes.

Bankers and bank officers: Most banks today want to not only help you keep your money but are willing to work with you to make the most of it.  As a banking service, many banks today offer free investing advice, saving advice, and personalized meetings with bank officers that can help you figure out your money situation.
Lenders and bad credit lenders: How you deal with lenders will determine how well your credit score works. Avoiding too many inquiries by not applying for too many loans, establishing long-term business relationships with bankers, and doing business with bankers in an organized and professional way (i.e. paying your debts on time) will go a long way towards giving you a credit rating.  In turn, a good credit rating will make it easier to deal with lenders.

Look out for credit repair companies.

Many companies out there advertise that they can help you with credit repair, but the quality of these services – not to mention what they offer – varies widely.  Some companies really can help you with credit repair while others are actually under investigation for suspect business practices.  If you decide to seek help from a credit repair company, be sure that the company is legitimate and offers you viable services.

In general, you should be looking for non-profit credit counseling services rather than credit repair companies (some of which are really just lenders offering home equity loans anyway, which are of limited use to you if you want to improve your credit).

Check to make sure that the company has good standing with the Better Business Bureau and clients who are happy with the credit repair services they received from the company.  Always read the paperwork carefully before you sign and make sure that you understand how much you are paying for and how much you are paying.

Before deciding to seek help from a credit help or credit counseling service, be sure that the problem cannot be resolved on your own.  Indications that you may need credit counseling include:

• You cannot pay your bills and avoid the necessities of life.
• You avoid the phone, the mail, and the door because you are being harassed by collection agencies.
• You have avoided going out because you feel terrible about your financial state.
• You have no idea how you will repay your bills and loans – you do not know where to start.

Seek free or inexpensive help before seeking paid credit repair help

If you need credit repair, odds are good that your finances aren’t in the best possible shape.  That likely means that you should attempt to spend as little as possible on credit repair – the money you save can be channeled into repaying your debts.  Before seeking credit repair services, follow the tips we have posted on this site in order to repair your own credit.

Also, seek out free or inexpensive sources of credit repair help.  Some non-profit credit counseling services are actually registered charities and will work on your behalf.  If you can get help from one of these companies or undertake credit repair yourself, you will be able to save money quite easily.

In addition, these companies tend to be more legitimate than credit repair companies that take your money, anyway.

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Collections agencies use fear in order to get debtors to pay their bills. One of the ways they intimidate people is by through the use of harassment.

Real World Example:

“Debt Collector: “Whatever way you want to handle this thing, you handle it, but as of today, I’m going to handle it my way.”
Consumer: “I’m going to make sure my rights are not violated.”
Debt Collector: “No, no, you going to get violated, sir.”
Debt collector: “What I’m going to do? I know where you’re at. I’m going to have my investigators come to your place of employment and drag you out, OK? Good day, big guy.”

Actual Legal Position:

Collections agencies are prohibited from harassing debtors. It is unlawful for bill collectors to bully their clients, or to use threatening or disparaging language in order collect an unsettled debt.

Almost all of us have to deal with collections agency at some point in life. unfortunately for so many fellow Americans, it is now. It is the worst of all times. You have huge debt and no savings to pay, still some one is keeping you on the toe to collect an over due credit card or mortgage payment. Believe me, Collection agents are the last people you want to deal with in these difficult times.

Hard fact is that you have to and you can. I am hoping that with the information contained in this article, you will be able to get through the stressful process and experience that leaves many feeling like they have been taken advantage of.

Over the period of next several posts I will show you some examples of extreme collection techniques and tactics employed by some agents. I also want to educate you that these methods are both unethical and unlawful and you are to keep you head up in all of this and you should not let anyone violate your rights.

My advice is to read these scenarios as they are real life examples of what happens to other people every day. These are the methods collection agencies use to aggressively pursue debtors. You owe money, not your life and peace of mind to bank. Resist is the word!

First article of this series will be published tomorrow. Please subscribe to our RSS Feed so that you can get these articles delivered to  your email inbox.

All of us who live in the United States, have spent all our lives looking at the same style of paper currency: those things that say “Federal Reserve Note” and have a dead President in the center of the bill in an oval frame. Every now and then the Bureau of Engraving and Printing starts distributing a new design of U.S. currency, we’ve started seeing some variations in the theme; certainly we get to see the details of the portrait engravers’ work much more clearly. Still, though, we rarely stop to appreciate the skill and artistry of the engravers… after all, it’s just money. We just take it out and spend it.

But what if the Bureau of Engraving and Printing decided, as they did in the 1890s, to use our paper money as a showcase for art?

Silver certificates are an older form of U.S. currency; their value was backed by silver held in the U.S. Treasury, and they could be redeemed at the Treasury for silver dollars. An 1886 Act of Congress authorized the creation of a new series of silver certificates, and so it came to pass that the Secretary of the Treasury gave the Bureau of Engraving and Printing the task of designing and printing the new currency.

Claude M. Johnson, then Chief of the BEP, had definite ideas about the role of art in paper money. By 1893 Johnson and the BEP had decided on four artists – the muralists Edwin H. Blashfield, Will H. Low, C. S. Reinhart and Walter Shirlaw – to design the new currency, and planned to award a commission of $800 for each design the BEP accepted.

1896 $1 USD Note

The noted artists, together with the BEP’s talented engravers, created a new currency of unparalleled beauty – extraordinary designs, the likes of which had never been seen before in the U.S. and have never been equalled since.

Will H. Low’s design for the $1 note

Will H. Low’s design for the $1 note, entitled History Instructing Youth, shows a female History with a young student standing beside her, gesturing to an open book of history before her. An olive branch rests against the book, holding it open to show the Constitution of the United States upon the page. Both the Washington Memorial and the Capitol Dome can be seen in the background landscape. The outside border of the note shows 23 wreaths, each bearing the name of a noteworthy American – not surprisingly starting with Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, but also including such names as poet Henry Longfellow, inventor Robert Fulton, and author Nathaniel Hawthorne, among many others. The seal of the Treasury appears in the lower right.

Low’s original painting, which now hangs in the BEP’s Washington, D.C. offices, was slowly and artfully reproduced as an intaglio printing plate by the BEP’s talented engraving staff.

Shortly after the $1 bill was released to the public, Bureau engraver G.F.C. Smillie was informed by a friend that the word tranquillity was misspelled in the tiny Constitution that adorned the book. “Rats,” Smillie reportedly replied. “The word was spelled that way in the original Constitution…”

Smillie was, of course, correct… even though, at the time, tranquillity (with two “l”s) was the accepted spelling.

“Now at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing we must ‘follow copy,’” a Bureau spokesman later stated, “and cannot demonstrate superior knowledge in the face of absolute authority. Hence, ‘tranquility’ is on the new note. There is plenty of authority for spelling that word economically in respect to ‘l’s.”

1896 $1 USD Currency Note

The $1 note was released to the public on July 14, 1896, the first of the series to be put into circulation. Because of the public’s unfamiliarity with the new money, though, some people began illegally “raising” the values of the bills by changing the numbers in the corners and then passing the notes off as “the new $5s” or “the new $10s”.

The memory of this may be why the present-day U.S. Treasury chose to release the highest denominations of our new currency first, and then slowly proceeded downwards as people grew accustomed to the new designs. (It would make little sense for a counterfeiter to take a new $100 bill and try to persuade people it was a new style of $1.)

The back of the 1896 $1, featuring intricate geometric lathe work and a winged, shield-bearing Liberty in each of the upper corners, carries traditionally-styled portraits of both George and Martha Washington. The portraits were engraved by Alfred Sealey and Charles Burt, respectively, and the overall design of the back was the work of Thomas F. Morris.

Recently made the Chief of the BEP’s engraving division, Morris had his own concerns about the 1896 note designs. They were the only notes since 1861 which had no geometric lathe designs on the face of the notes, and the intricate lathe-work served as a strong deterrent to counterfeiters. Perhaps this accounts for the unusually intricate and thorough lathe-work which Morris applied to the backs of the 1896 designs.

People being what they are, there were several public statements that the central “One” on the note was irresponsible. The reasoning was thus: “no one should come between George and Martha Washington”.

Don’t blame me. I don’t make the news. I only report it.

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Guardian in a recent report revealed the perpetrators of the global financial crisis. It  revealed their names and photos too. The British Guardian newspaper on Monday published a list of people whose work has proved fatal for the world economy. Lies have been told by  both policy makers and business sharks.

The publication also listed visionaries who, warned us long before the actual crisis hit our shores.  Unfortunately for the all us, these people were not involved in the process of decision-making.

In its famous “black list” Guardian has 25 spots. Almost half of them are filled with the people that have something to do with economic crisis of today. here are some of political and financial heavy weights.

Bark up the wrong tree “guru”

Alan Greenspan, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve( 1987 to 2006), is on the list at number one. The most influential financier has received from fans the world title of “guru”, “oracle” and “maestro”. In the delight of observers led his calmness with which Greenspan has held America through crises of 1987 and 1991, as well as the collapse of IT-industry in 2000 and panic in the markets that followed the September 11, 2001.  It was Greenspan in early 2000 pursued a policy of low rates of the Fed, which led to easy money and irresponsible distribution of loans by banks. Moreover, the head of the Fed encouraged mortgage borrowers to take loans with floating rates. When rates inevitably increased after the tightening of fiscal policy in the middle of this decade, the people proved to have nothing to pay sharply increased the cost of credit.

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Neck down in debt and still asking yourself… Can I be a Millionaire? You are not alone..This is the question that haunts the minds of everyone, especially, the jobless and the small and medium businessmen. Being in debt or in bad financial condition does not mean that you can not make it to American Dream. We do have some historic examples that show, how an idea of a penny made someone a Millionaire. It is not the idea, it is one’s dedication that makes the ideas a reality. Sometimes a very stupid looking idea proves so fruitful that you always wonder that “This idea worked…!”

So if you have some business ideas and if others think that they are just plain stupid, take no offense. When you think you are right then JUST DO IT!.

Now we come toward the examples that showed us how a few stupid looking business ideas, worked wonders for some people and made them millionaires. Each of these Business Ideas is amazing. Even more amazing is the story of these people making it happen. Enjoy the list

1. Million Dollar Homepage

Create a page with a million pixel image. Sell each pixel for one dollar each. Read the full story