Ziad K Abdelnour is the author of “Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics” and a regular panelist and speaker on private equity and venture capital topics at industry conferences nationwide.

Former US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair recently testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee stating that an extent danger facing America today is not terrorism, it’s the current economic crisis. It would not surprise me in the least if some enterprising guerrilla journalist were to uncover the fact that people like Stephen Lerner were actually on the JP Morgan payroll. The art of misdirection is not just confined to the worlds of magic and politics. The average American is dreadfully unaware of just how depraved these people are. The little regard they have for human life is beyond common comprehension.

Looking at this from a purely technocratic sociological viewpoint, avoiding mass riots and violence while this many desperate people lose life-sustaining programs appears to be an impossible task, and given our current economic and political environment this seems inevitable. What’s going to happen in this society when these people are without jobs when their families hurt when they lose their homes in massive numbers a neighborhood at a time? The scenarios are grim.

After analyzing our current crisis and studying well-established historical precedents, one must conclude that the global bankers have only three possible cards left to play. The first is admitting culpability and working to restore the American economic engine to its free-market potential. History has taught us that the ruling class rarely admits error and never concedes power.

Continue Reading: Economic Crisis

It happened to me last month….. An executive director of a non-profit approached me after my keynote address at a very big event in Washington DC and mentioned how ineffective his board of directors is.

He was very impressed in what I have created at the Financial Policy Council http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/ and wanted to explore ways I could assist him creating a similar type board at his non-profit.

I said why not and we went doing a series of things that helped his board better understand its role and get excited and engaged in the work of expanding its reach, increasing its accountability, and driving its growth strategy.

Here are some of the key tips I gave him which I thought I would also share with you.

Get Clear About Your Role. You must develop board by-laws, a committee structure, individual goals and individual roles and responsibilities. The board as a group must come up with all of these elements (with help) and together decide how they want to work and create accountability for themselves.

Find the Right People. Contrary to popular belief, a nonprofit does NOT want to recruit any warm body for their board. Instead you want to take a hard look at your organizational strategy and determine the skills, experience and networks required at the board level to make that strategy a reality. Compare those needs with the current board and determine where the holes lie. Then recruit people with those missing skills, experience and networks.

Continue Reading: Key Tips to Create a Right Non Profit Board

Does capitalism focus need to be changed – from short-term stock prices, valuing profits over people, and costs deferred to future generations – to some more alluring system if this system exists.

I personally believe that anything we will do to reign on Capitalism will stifle the wonders that it produces. I also believe that the so-called “problems of capitalism” are not from capitalism itself, but from attempts to “improve” on the free market in an attempt to better some particular interest group by redistribution from some other lesser interest group, at the point of a gun. Capitalism is simplicity itself, and any complication makes it worse. The philosophy is very simple: individuals trade with one another only when it is mutually beneficial, and their interaction does not harm the person or property of any third party.

As long as political parties control the legislative and executive branches of our government, and through them the judicial branch, it will not be possible to change our pseudo-capitalistic system.

In the United States, where political parties sell legislation to vested interests and maintain ‘party whips’ to ensure that party-controlled representatives enact the legislation they’ve sold, gigantic corporations control the economic system and manipulate it to their own advantage. I believe that is the root cause of the failure of capitalism.

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I often wondered why some people go truly out of control when success, money, and power go to their heads until one day I read this: “Money doesn’t make you an asshole. Money just makes you care less if people know you’re an asshole”… How true.

So why does this happen?

Is it because the feeling of power has been found to have a similar effect on the brain to cocaine by increasing the levels of testosterone and its by-product 3-androstanediol which in turn leads to raised levels of dopamine, the brain’s reward system, which is very addictive?

One theory suggests indeed it’s the same way we behave when we are on drugs or craving for drugs. We have tricked our brains long back in the history of our evolution to seek an excess of dopamine rewards (the pleasure chemical). Naturally, sex releases the highest amount of dopamine, followed by food. But when we’re on drugs, the levels increase far more and over time our brains alter the neural circuitry to get dopamine levels back to normal. But in the process food, sex and so many beautiful things lose their ability to give us pleasure. Hence, to escape withdrawal, we need more drugs……..Read More

Ziad K Abdelnour.

While the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it is still operating under the exact same rules that led to its near collapse,” Obama said in announcing his proposals. He went on to tap into populist, anti-bank sentiment, noting the banks are making record profits while refusing to lend to small businesses, that they are charging high credit card rates and failing to “refund taxpayers for the bailout.” He added that it was “exactly this kind of irresponsibility that makes clear reform is necessary.

But would the latest proposals, including the “Volcker Rule” named for their champion, Paul A. Volcker — the former Federal Reserve chairman who is one of Obama’s chief economic advisors — really get at the causes of the recent financial crisis? The Volcker Rule, including the proprietary-trading restriction, has many high-profile supporters. But we at Blackhawk think it misses the mark by focusing attention on the now-blurred distinction between commercial banks, which take deposits, and investment banks, which trade on their own accounts and underwrite stock and bond issues.

Increasingly, entrepreneurially minded Non profit leaders are bringing today the tactics of the private sector to the task of solving social problems. And with good cause: they need the cash.

Federal and state funding for Non profit dropped considerably lately after the 2008 crisis and it continues to decline. Similarly, corporate and individual giving has decreased, while social needs are on the rise. The Non profit sector is indeed under a lot of pressure. Costs are going up, resources are going down, and now we have people in need who weren’t around in the late decade.

Consequently, all Non profit are faced with trying to cure greater ills with even less money–or to find new ways to generate revenue and become less dependent on foundation and government grants. Some Non profit are even starting and running small, profit-seeking companies, channeling their earnings back into social-services programs. Many others are adopting private-sector management techniques in an attempt to get more mileage out of whatever resources they have. Either way, the new “social entrepreneurs” are creating hybrid businesses that blur traditional sector lines and uncover startling uses for marketplace power.

Greater accountability to clients: Non profit that do manage to generate earned income gain greater independence from the demands of funding sources, ultimately enabling them to be more accountable to the people they serve. Some nonprofits go so far as to gauge their services by actual market demand…….Read

Ziad K Abdelnour

The Occupy Wall Street movement no longer occupies Wall Street, but the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness. A new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults finds that about two-thirds of the public (66%) believes there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between therich and the poor—an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.

Most importantly, what happened to the American middle class? For the rest of us it’s this: what do I have to do to become one of the top 10 percent?

A 46% plurality believes that most rich people “are wealthy mainly because they know the right people or were born into wealthy families.” But nearly as many have a more favorable view of the rich: 43% say wealthy people became rich “mainly because of their own hard work, ambition or education,” largely unchanged from a Pew survey in 2008.

As someone who has been around self-made wealth creators all his life, maybe here’s where we can skip the rhetoric of class warfare and maybe begin to outline a prescription.

Education: The importance of education takes on three meanings among the top 10 percent: First, they’ve studied at that most famous institution, the School of Hard Knocks. This means, they’ve learned by taking on burdens that most of us avoid, such as making promises they don’t know how to keep but are willing to try.

Continue Reading: Wall Street Movement