Demographics

Good piece that covers a lot of the ground on the how and why of Europe's pending population decline.
Social issues that lead to aging populations and it touches on issues like longer working lives.

Interesting discussion on managing declining populations and shrinking cities

No Babies? - Declining Population in Europe - NYTimes.com

No blogging

Notice

No blogging for awhile
Spent 6 HOURS trying to chase flaws out of our network ...
WiFi, trying to extend the network but constant failures

Then went down into the crawlspace, inspected the hub, looked suspect.

Tracked back to the router, checking cables, etc.
Then back into the crawlspace, and there it was - bad signal on the T-10

So back to square one, and finally got the system back
But - no final jump

Note : I'm not, nor will I likely ever be a network trouble-shooter

Stepping up

Accepted a position on the Board of Michigan Land Use Institute

First meeting today, lots to get my arms around ...

I accepted it because I think I can add something, and I truly am behind some of the key programs, from local foods to "The Grand Vision", I need to learn more about issues like energy, as I'm not ready yet on "Big Wind"
At least in my backyard.

I do firmly believe in the idea that it's much easier to manage growth than decline.

Age

Unable to link to piece in Aviation Week & Space Technology

Transcribe message June 23

" Given the amount of tracking of aircraft life-hours, cycles-it seems odd for aviation expert Edmund S. Greenslet (AW&ST May 19 p19) to generalize and apply the "dog years" standard to airliners, in this case multiplying calendar years by three to get an idea on life stage. Venerable DC-3s and B-52s are 150 -180 years old, according to his standard, and are dead by most biological standards. As any of us past Greenslet's "prime of life" standard of 36 can tell you, it's not the years that tell the story. It's the mileage and maintenance."
Jim Tang
Kula Hawaii

mileage and maintenance

Take care of yourself...

Notes on the Net

Been commenting a bit more on Doc's Blog lately
He did a stint in the hospital (Harvard) and I felt compelled to throw in a quip from time to time.

We barely got to know one another via PCForum, some shared interests

Maybe more important was the fact that we are a few weeks apart in age, some similar life experiences, and both sorta "old techies" embracing some of the internet formats and forms.

Doc Searls Weblog : Hallelujah

Anyway, point of the post is that there is an asynchronous, factor at work. At my age, I may slip in banter and repartee in "real time" (a relative term).

There is a quasi-time in asynchronous communication that allows reflection, the latent "ah-ha" and all the functions of a too full for real time reaction memory.

Reference this :
http://looneydunes.blogspot.com/search?q=older+brains

"When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit."

Here's to another 30 yrs Doc ...

Long Bets -gets some "juice"

Million Dollar bet should get some notice

Congrats to folks at Long Now/Long Bets

Long Bets -:
"“Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S & P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses.”

Predictor
Warren Buffett

Challenger
Protege Partners, LLC

Stakes $1,000,000
will go to Girls Incorporated of Omaha if Buffett wins,
or Friends of Absolute Return for Kids, Inc if Protege Partners, LLC wins."

R.I.P.

Ah ... "Seven Words You Can Never Use on Television" ...
Groundbreaker

George Carlin, Irreverent Comedian, Dies at 71 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

"Recently, Mr. Carlin was named the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He was to receive the award at the Kennedy Center in November. “In his lengthy career as a comedian, writer, and actor, George Carlin has not only made us laugh, but he makes us think,” said Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Kennedy Center chairman. “His influence on the next generation of comics has been far-reaching.”

BTW : George Carlin lyrics - The Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV

Policy issues

On this one, I have to say I'd side with McCain.
Corn ethanol subsidies strike me as a boondoggle and contribute to food inflation, waste taxpayer money and distract from better solutions.

Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol - NYTimes.com:

"Ethanol is one area in which Mr. Obama strongly disagrees with his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona. While both presidential candidates emphasize the need for the United States to achieve “energy security” while also slowing down the carbon emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming, they offer sharply different visions of the role that ethanol, which can be made from a variety of organic materials, should play in those efforts.

Mr. McCain advocates eliminating the multibillion-dollar annual government subsidies that domestic ethanol has long enjoyed. As a free trade advocate, he also opposes the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff that the United States slaps on imports of ethanol made from sugar cane, which packs more of an energy punch than corn-based ethanol and is cheaper to produce.

“We made a series of mistakes by not adopting a sustainable energy policy, one of which is the subsidies for corn ethanol, which I warned in Iowa were going to destroy the market” and contribute to inflation, Mr. McCain said this month in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de S�o Paulo. “Besides, it is wrong,” he added, to tax Brazilian-made sugar cane ethanol, “which is much more efficient than corn ethanol.”"

Moonset

6AM
Moon getting ready to set




Also tried a video

More on floding

Found this after prior post

Copyright material, but will go into archives later ...

Midwest Floods Dredge Up Dispute

Critics Say Building
Near Rivers Is Cause
Of Recent Problems

By DOUGLAS BELKIN
June 19, 2008; Page A4

ST. CHARLES, Mo. -- Since the historic flood of 1993, nearly 30,000 homes have been built on land that was underwater around the Mississippi and Missouri rivers near St. Louis. This weekend, the dwellers may find out if they built wisely.

As the swollen Mississippi rolls south, breaching levees, drowning crops and submerging towns, a debate is intensifying among scientists, environmentalists and developers about whether development not only flirts with disaster, but helps cause it.

Developers started building a planned 5,700-unit subdivision called The New Town at St. Charles after the 1993 flood. Residents in this town 20 miles west of St. Louis said builders told them it would never flood. But now, as waters rise, many are uneasy.

"I asked my sister this morning if she had flood insurance," said Patty Moore, who was walking her dog near the town green this week. "She said, 'We live between two rivers, it would be foolish not to.'"

The White House on Wednesday asked Congress for $1.8 billion in emergency disaster aid in the wake of the Midwest floods. The money is intended to replenish the federal disaster-relief fund in anticipation of future losses. Losses from the current floods might have been higher if the federal government hadn't purchased low-lying land after the 1993 flood caused $12 billion in damage. The government has since bought out thousands of homeowners and turned much of their land into parks and undeveloped areas.

Around St. Louis, where the Mississippi is expected to crest this weekend, a number of scientists and activists argue the floods aren't caused by heavy rainfall but by irresponsible development. There has been considerable building since 1993 in Greater St. Louis, where demand for accessible property is at a premium. New and expanding communities pushed for new, taller and stronger levees.

By building along the riverbanks and forcing the Mississippi into a bed that is less than half the width of where it ran a century ago, residents are displacing water and forcing the river to run faster and higher. That, in turn, increases demand for taller, broader levees.

But as those levees make way for development that paves over wetlands, more runoff water is channeled into the river. Critics said the result is a self-perpetuating cycle: The rivers rise higher, new levees are built bigger, the rivers rise again.

Bob Chriss, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, said about the same amount of water washed down the Mississippi during a flood in 1903 as did in 1993. But in 1903, the river crested at 38 feet in St. Louis; in 1993, the waters rose to almost 50 feet.

"We're making these flood levels higher," Mr. Chriss said. "A stage of 38 feet was almost unheard of 100 years ago. Now it happens all the time."

Tim Kusky, a professor of natural sciences at St. Louis University, said, "Eventually some of these levees are going to fail. The question is when, not if."

At the center of the problem is an absence of any comprehensive river-management plan. Each levee along the Mississippi is under local control.

"Each levee has a small impact, but cumulatively they can have a large impact," said David Busse, the chief of engineering and construction for the St. Louis District of the Army Corps of Engineers. "From an engineering point of view, it would be great to look at the system as a system." Past efforts to assemble such a plan have fallen short.

The Army Corps itself, which helps build levees, has been a target of criticism by groups such as the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance in St. Louis, an advocacy group led by Adolphus Busch IV, a scion of the beer-making family. The organization was founded in 2000 to fight development on the flood plain between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Mr. Busch said floods have three times destroyed his home on a 2,000-acre spread west of St. Louis. In 1993, water rose to the second floor. Since then, he has had the structure raised onto an 18-foot-high mound of earth. "The Corps can't keep pushing more water downstream and then be surprised when there are serious consequences," Mr. Busch said.

Once planned, levees are rarely stopped, but a recent lawsuit halted construction of a levee on the Missouri River in Jefferson City, Mo., on environmental grounds.

"[Hurricane] Katrina was the real turning point for all of this," Mr. Busch said. "For a long time the Army Corps of Engineers was as close as you could get to God in the United States, but I think that's finally changing."

The Corps' Mr. Busse said the agency is neutral when it comes to building levees and acts at the request of Congress and local communities.

Let's get real - at least a little

First, I'll set up the straw man - that floods are due to Global Warming

Iowa Flooding - Global Warming Increases Frequency of Extreme Weather - Mississippi River Flooding - thedailygreen.com:

"What the Mississippi River Flood Tells Us About Global Warming...

The slug of slow-moving destruction that is making its way from Iowa down the Mississippi River Valley is extraordinary by any measure.

That the last flood of this magnitude occurred just 15 years ago should be cause for concern.

Floods happen. Big floods happen. Epic floods happen.

But they don't happen all the time. Scientists talk about the 100 Year Flood, and the 500 Year Flood. These are floods of such magnitude they could be expected to occur every 100 years, or every 500 years. Infrequently, in other words.

In Iowa, and on down the Mississippi River, that once-a-century event has happened twice in the life of some teenagers"

But let's take some things into consideration

Like ... It's called a Flood Plain!
F-L-O-O-D
Why oh why would those that choose to build and live on a flood plain expect anything but floods.

Our house in the Lansing area is sited next to Sycamore Creek, which floods
But, our house is built into the bank, on the high ground and across the creek is a 30 to 40 acre flood plain. When the creek rises, as it clears the bank, it ... floods the flood plain, and stops rising.

But let's continue.

Parts of the flood plain (Mississippi and others) have been engineered to not serve their natural purpose.

Iowa Flooding Could Be An Act of Man, Experts Say - washingtonpost.com:

"Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, suspects that this natural disaster wasn't really all that natural. He points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed.

'We've done numerous things to the landscape that took away these water-absorbing functions,' he said. 'Agriculture must respect the limits of nature.'"


And there is the question of the levee's
Midwest floods expose outdated levee systems - USATODAY.com:

"At least half of the 31 levees already breached or topped between southern Iowa and St. Louis were not built to handle a flood of such historic proportions, according to a USA TODAY review of data from the Army Corps of Engineers. Many of those were built at least 30 years ago, and some date to the 1940s.

As riverside development has boomed, 'levees built 50 years ago for agricultural purposes are often now asked to do the work of a residential or urban levee,' says Eric Halpin, a corps special assistant for dam and levee safety. The floods 'show a need for more robust and resilient levee systems.'"

But note - other levee's have been build, increasing the load on earlier structures

When the Levee Breaks: Is the Culprit Rain--Or Overdevelopment?: Scientific American:

"Efforts to carve a controlled channel for the Missouri, Mississippi and their tributary rivers also contributed to the problem. The reason: the Mississippi now flows through a conduit roughly half the width of its channel that existed before most of the levees were built, which means more water passes faster through a narrower area. 'Channeling the river means you are going to have higher crests in the river,' Corley notes, that are sometimes higher than the levees built previously to contain them."

The following is from May 17th ... 2007

Development Rises on St. Louis Area Flood Plains - New York Times:

"About 28,000 homes have been built and more than 6,000 acres of commercial and industrial space developed on land that was underwater in 1993, according to research by Nicholas Pinter, a geologist who studies the region at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Building is happening on flood plains across Missouri, but most of the development is in the St. Louis area, and it is estimated to be worth more than $2.2 billion. Though scientists warn about the danger of such building, the Missouri government has subsidized some of it through tax financing for builders.

“No one has really looked at the cumulative effect,” said Timothy M. Kusky, a professor of natural sciences at St. Louis University, who calculates that there has been more development on the Missouri River flood plain in the years since 1993 than at any other time in the history of the region."


Maybe we should consider that it's not good to fool with Mother Nature
CO2 and other factors may be affecting climate change, but it's more obvious that drainage, channeling (higher levees) of rivers add a great deal to the problem.

As for development on flood plains - it should not be permitted.
And I think its an abomination that such development qualifies for "National Flood Insurance."

Hillary for Veep?

Maybe not ...

Obama's Message to Hillary - WSJ.com:
June 17, 2008 11:25 p.m.

"Barack Obama has sent a clear but unmistakable response to the pressure he's been getting to put Hillary Clinton on his ticket as the vice presidential nominee. Yesterday, his campaign named Patti Solis Doyle, the former Clinton campaign manager who was fired in February and has not spoken to Mrs. Clinton since, as the chief of staff who will help guide whomever he picks as his running mate.

A major Clinton fundraiser told the New York Observer he considered the move 'the biggest f--- you I have ever seen in politics.' According to the unnamed Clinton donor, 'Clinton loyalists view [Ms. Doyle] with deep suspicion and believe that she is shopping around a book deal and acted as a background source for an extremely harsh Vanity Fair piece about Bill Clinton.'

'Either one of two things happen,' predicted the fundraiser. 'Hillary is selected as vice president and they fire Patti, or Hillary is not going to be the vice president.'

Team Obama insists no message is being sent in the hiring of Ms. Doyle, who was one of several campaign staffers whose appointment was announced on Monday. But Clinton insiders say the former First Couple is livid over the appointment and it will not make repairing relations between the two camps any easier."

Le Bear

Black bear I'd posted about a few days ago
Front page of Leelanau Enterprise:

Joel Mabus

Played tonight at the Leelanau School
Crowd of a few dozen

Turns out he'd turned down a later offer to perform with Garrison Keeler in Ann Arbor tonight to fulfill his commitment to do a workshop and concert here.

Joel Mabus Home:
"'It's hard to imagine another artist on the folk scene
who combines the same concise, deceptively understated, lyrical insight and sometimes devastating wit with such world-class instrumental prowess'"

5th3rd Cont ...

and the Beat Goes On ...

MarketBeat : Today's Regional Banking Dog: Fifth Third:

"BMO analysts say the company is in danger of cutting its dividend by at least half due to greater-than-expected losses in the mortgage portfolio, where the bank has significant exposure to the stressed markets of Florida and Michigan. Shares are down 13% and are among the more actively traded on the Nasdaq (behind the usual tech giants).

In a commentary Wednesday, Fox, Pitt-Kelton analyst Dan Wantrobski questioned whether “anyone was even close” to that vaunted capitulation moment the world eagerly awaits. He says Fifth Third is one of those, demonstrating a requisite number of lousy characteristics that “in the past signaled proximity to trend exhaustion.”"

Or maybe just a poorly managed bank ...
Personally, I'm fed up with them.

So There

It was back at the end of February that they started chasing me away with failures to exectute.

Sit down with an officer was April 1 - he chose the day

It's taken a little time to set up alternatives, but I started pulling money out this month ...




Bye Bye

Maybe it was something else

Media Charged With Sexism in Clinton Coverage - NYTimes.com:

"Angered by what they consider sexist news coverage of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, many women and erstwhile Clinton supporters are proposing boycotts of the cable networks, putting up videos on a “Media Hall of Shame,” starting a national conversation about sexism and pushing Mrs. Clinton’s rival, Senator Barack Obama, to address the matter."

Maybe there were other factors
Assuming too much, poor campaign management, wrong competition (an articulate, non "urban" black man). Maybe it was Bill Clinton - how could that factor be sexist?

Fickle

I'm not sure that this is "butterfly love" but, for a moment, it is a threesome


Tiger Swallowtails if I recall right

For Nikki - bit of Thunder

Audio on the camera did not pick up the Rolling Thunder well enough

Wild Life - update

Looney Dunes: Wild life

I'll update more if the Leelanau Enterprise posts online
Front page today's paper (it's a weekly) and story about Da Bear, spotted nearby, with photo.

Est was 200-300 lbs
bet it was same one we spotted

Brainwashing

Now This Really Is an Oil Shock:

A new poll says fewer Americans blame the industry for $4-a-gallon gas

Come on folks, those greedy, rapacious, oil companies have the current administration in their pocket.

Ideas that China and India are fueling global demand are just hogwash.

It's just a conspiracy

The companies have secretly invested in solar and wind, bio-fuels and are forcing oil prices higher so that these investments pay off.

Leadership

OK, so there's this "motivational" poster ...



But maybe the team just gets to see a horses ass?

Wild life

First off, headed to a meeting yesterday and moving along, speed limit (55) on M-72
Some woods, mostly farmland when I spotted a brown blur to my left, just about the A-Pillar of the Jeep.
Followed by a thump
Wow
Checked mirror - and a big white-tail, maybe buck, but too early in season to tell
Whoomped the left rear quarter
Saw the deer flailing about off to the shoulder
Stopped and got out
Deer had made to the treeline - may survive, may not
No real damage as it was a glancing blow
Some saliva, mud smear (shot taken this evening)



First serious deer hit for me

Then tonight, headed home from Glen Arbor, about 8:30PM

Big, healthy Black Bear sauntering off the road into the woods
Only have my phone camera, so you really can't make him/her out
But he/she is sitting just off the road, in the bushes

My guess 200+lbs
I was NOT going to get out for a closer shot!


Time to get back to keeping a camera in the car!

Jeff Jonas: Future of Data

Excellent post from a very knowledgeable source

read it

Jeff Jonas: USC School of Cinematic Arts, "Imagine the World in 2050":

"putting the science back in science fiction." and the future of ubiquitous data.

Follow up to Summary

Doc Searls Weblog � Meet the new boss, nothing like the old boss

Quoting Dave Winer
The Internet destabilizes every hierarchy it contacts. It erases every barrier to entry. The only way to win is to point off-site, in every way you can think of. Win by offering better value, not by locking users in. People will become instant refugees to escape your clutches. Think you’re immune? Think again.

It’s about the Net. And the Net is us. It’s all outside, not inside.

---
Clinton's may have been masters of the medium, pre-net, but not of today’s.

Suspect that you can’t spin the net, there is a lack of central mass

You can spin a top, something with centralized mass, inertia, but not a fog.

Summary

Good summary

Clinton's still "leaders of the party" until the election
Click to read the whole thing

Political Memo - Campaign Adds to Complicated Clinton Legacy - NYTimes.com:

"WASHINGTON — Bill and Hillary Clinton have stirred virulent passions in their nearly two decades in the national spotlight. They have been known as many things, good and bad — brilliant policy analysts, manipulators of facts and friends, tireless campaigners, skillful political tacticians, monumentally self-absorbed baby boomers. But most of all they were known as winners.

Until now.

While the Clintons will almost certainly play a continuing role in national politics, and while Mrs. Clinton could yet emerge as this year’s vice-presidential nominee, a major chapter in their vertiginous public biography was closed when Mrs. Clinton conceded the Democratic presidential nomination to Senator Barack Obama on Saturday. The Clintons’ complicated legacy is all the more complicated now.

Mrs. Clinton, who survived public humiliation as first lady and then easily won two Senate races in New York, entered the 2008 presidential primary season as the odds-on favorite because of money, connections and celebrity. But through a series of blunders and the appearance of a once-in-a-lifetime opponent, Mrs. Clinton saw the prize slip through her grasp despite a valiant personal effort that lasted through the final contests in South Dakota and Montana.

The Clintons often seemed out of touch with the political times — cautious when they should have been bold, negative when they should have been inspirational. Exquisitely attuned to the political winds in 1992, they watched Mr. Obama almost effortlessly master the changed environment of 2008."

Bold added as I think it hits home
Just out of touch with today's voter, and IT/message handling

Then spotted Doc's piece:

Doc Searls Weblog � Meet the new boss, nothing like the old boss

Quoting Dave Winer
The Internet destabilizes every hierarchy it contacts. It erases every barrier to entry. The only way to win is to point off-site, in every way you can think of. Win by offering better value, not by locking users in. People will become instant refugees to escape your clutches. Think you’re immune? Think again.

It’s about the Net. And the Net is us. It’s all outside, not inside.

---
Clinton's may have been masters of the medium, pre-net, but not of today’s.

Suspect that you can’t spin the net, there is a lack of central mass

You can spin a top, something with centralized mass, inertia, but not a fog.

And from Dave Winer:
Scripting News: 6/8/2008:
"People who saw the Internet as a fund-raising phenomenon after the Dean campaign were missing the point, as we said over and over, and I think at first Obama missed it too -- but he has a young, flexible and ambitious mind. When Clinton said in one of the debates that he must not only denounce Lewis Farrakhan, he must also reject him, you could see his eyes light up (at 5:52 in the video) -- Okay cooool, he said 'I reject him!' So when the Internet proved it could deliver minds and bodies in addition to dollars and cents, who was Young Obama to argue?

This is the kind of flexibility you rarely see in anyone, esp in someone as young as Obama. Always look for ways to submit, to surrender. Decide what's important to you and give up on everything else. Who cares what word you want to use -- you want me to reject, then I reject!"

Again emphases added

Torture

Maybe Torture should be allowed

Plead guilty, your partners plead guilty, but you contend you were right all along ...

Maybe a bit of waterboarding, how about the rack, boiling oil?

Talking Business - Serving Time, but Lacking Remorse - NYTimes.com:

"Some guys just don’t know when to shut up. William S. Lerach is one of those guys.

William S. Lerach was sentenced to two years after pleading guilty to playing a role in a kickback scheme at his law firm.

Once the most feared plaintiffs’ lawyer in the land, Mr. Lerach went to prison last month for his involvement in a long-running kickback scheme. His former firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, you see, allegedly made secret payments to a small group of people who acted, in effect, as Potemkin plaintiffs, allowing the firm to trot them out as clients whenever it wanted to sue a company whose stock had fallen. Which, by the way, was often; in its glory years, Milberg Weiss’s annual “market share” in securities litigation exceeded 50 percent."

Great big Whoops

Flyboys screw up
Brass pays for it

From the service that's trying to find a justification for it's existence.
This was the same branch of the armed forces that hinted that it didn't care what Gates said about weapon's systems, they'd go to Congress for more money for pet projects.

2 Leaders Ousted From Air Force in Atomic Errors - NYTimes.com

"The Air Force secretary, Michael W. Wynne, and the service’s chief of staff, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, were forced to resign after the inquiry found that the latest in a series of incidents reflected “a pattern of poor performance” in securing sensitive military components, Mr. Gates said at a Pentagon briefing.

So deep and serious are the problems, Mr. Gates said, that he has asked a former secretary of defense and of energy, James R. Schlesinger, to head “a senior-level task force” to recommend improvements in the safekeeping of nuclear weapons, delivery vehicles and other sensitive items."

Image so funny I had to post it

Bubba Trouble

The Comeback Id

Old friends and longtime aides are wringing their hands over Bill Clinton’s post–White House escapades, from the dubious (and secretive) business associations to the media blowups that have bruised his wife’s campaign, to the private-jetting around with a skirt-chasing, scandal-tinged posse. Some point to Clinton’s medical traumas; others blame sheer selfishness, and the absence of anyone who can say “no.” Exploring Clintonworld, the author asks if the former president will be consumed by his own worst self.

by Todd S. Purdum July 2008

Sic Transit Gloria

How about a big round of "boo hoo"
Note that this piece seems to be very Manhattan-centric.

It's as if layoffs on Wall St. are news.

Lesson - live below your means, not beyond.

It’s Not So Easy Being Less Rich - NYTimes.com:

"They seem to have nothing to fret about: their net worths range from $5 million to $1 billion. A blip in the markets shouldn’t send their chateau-size Park Avenue co-ops to foreclosure or exile them to Payless Shoes.

But Ms. Chemtob’s clients are concerned all the same, she said, because their incomes have shrunk, say, to $2 million a year from $8 million, and they know that their 2008 bonus checks are likely to be much less impressive.

One of her clients recently confessed that his net worth had decreased to $8 million from more than $20 million, and he thinks that his wife will leave him. He has hidden their fall in fortune by taking on debt to pay for her extravagant clothes and vacations.

“I literally had to sit there and tell him that he had to tell his wife that she had to stop spending,” she said. “He was actually scared she would leave him because their financial situation changed so drastically.”"