After an introductory chapter in which Newbery provides the reader with his background and a brief introduction to the vision behind Debt Cleanse and its accompanying website, the following section goes on to provide an extensive list of vocabulary words that any reader looking to get rid of his or her debt would do well to memorize.
The third chapter elucidates the steps needed to get started debt cleansing. Some of these steps, especially on first read, may seem radical, even downright illicit, but could ultimately prove immensely useful to one looking to finally emerge from their debt. Here Newbery explicates the eight essential principles to debt cleansing that appear constantly in the book, including the stopping payment of debt, the ignoring of any creditors (even upon threat of arrest), the necessity of disputing debts, and the
welcoming, and instigating, of lawsuits. Other controversial, yet understandable and perhaps even necessary, notions that Newbery proposes here include not caring about one's credit score, the necessity of having a lawyer you trust on retainer, and the advisability of never filing for bankruptcy.
The subsequent dozen-or so chapters each painstakingly and eruditely guide the reader through the steps necessary to eliminate many of the most common debts plaguing Americans today, include mortgage payments, car loans, student loans, medical bills, and credit card loans. Each chapter not only thoroughly explains the processes and steps that need to be undertaken in order to cleanse the reader of that form of loan, but additionally help the reader to understand the intricacies and the lingo associated with that type of loan. The hundred-plus page appendices at the conclusion of the book, entitled "Action Tools," provide readers with hundreds of necessary forms, questions, and checklists needed to cleanse debt.
While Debt Cleanse will be too radical anapproach to financial stability for more conservative readers, for those who wish to follow in Newbery's footsteps, it serves an indispensable guide and printed companion to DebtCleanse.com. If Newbery succeeds, it may even help engender the debt revolution that he desires.A review of Capital In The Twenty First Century would itself have to be a book, so let this be a mere reflection on some of Thomas Picketty's wealth of material. And there is no better place to start than his startling demonstration of how little changes in the structure of the ownership of wealth, unless war intervenes. Furthermore, his demonstration that things are getting back to 'normal' after the twin conflict shocks of the twentieth century's World Wars could, unless tempered by resigned realism, easily provoke depression in the reader. Thomas Picketty's book ought to be required reading for anyone - certainly anyone who happens tp be British - who benefitted from the social mobility
..available in the 1950s to 1970s. We have tended to blame the 1944 Education Act for providing the abnormal conditions that led to a measurable, albeit temporary, decrease in inequality. But Thomas Picketty sets the record straight by clarifying that it was merely a result of the aberrations of war, which for a few decades weakened the power of capital. Normal service has since been resumed.
Picketty desribes how unevenly capital is distributed, especially in the developed societies. Typically, half of the population owns nothing, while the top ten per cent has about half of the wealth. For Picketty, capital means fixed assets that could potentially be traded, whose ownership can be bought and sold. It includes fixed assets, property, equity or cash, and excludes all forms of human capital, which may be an asset and may have value, but, he argues, its ownership can only be traded in slave societies, which now do not exist. He considers capital distribution and income distributions separately, however, so at least an element of human capital is represented in the latter. He observes that income is always more evenly distributed than fixed capital, with the top ten per cent receiving just 25 to 30 per cent of total incomes. As a consequence, if there has been any shift in the identity of the capital-owning elite in recent decades, then this has come about at least in large part as a result of the very highly remuneration available to certain professions at the very top of the income ladder. The phenomenon has also resulted in an increase in inequality observed in developed societies during recent decades, especially in the USA and United Kingdom. Inequality continues to increase.
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