I’ve mentioned that I love to read, and generally have a pile that I’m in the middle of reading at any given time on various topics.  One area that’s been of interest to me for years is finances.  I’ve heard several times that Dave Ramsey (whose books I think are great) has very effectively marketed the ideas of Larry Burkett, and finally decided to read some of Larry Burkett’s books.

I just finished a book by Burkett entitled The Coming Economic Earthquake.  This book was written in 1991, and details the concerns Burkett had about the economy and his predictions as to how it would play out.  As he said in his intro, he went out on a limb to write this, since if he was right, people would say he was lucky, and if he was wrong, people would say he didn’t know what he was talking about, but he felt it was his obligation to warn people about what he saw coming.  He estimated his predictions would play out around the year 2000, though he said it could take longer.  When asked before he died if he thought he had been off track in making these predictions since it hadn’t yet happened, he said, no, he thought it would be even worse than he predicted because the longer the delay, the worse the earthquake.

This book was riveting reading, and I told my ds15 and dd14 that I thought they’d enjoy reading it, too.  (They have to read for an hour a day from something I’ve approved – that hour doesn’t include their recreational reading – so I would allow this for their official reading.)  It’s very clear, interesting, and systematically puts together a lot of information that I’ve spent months assembling for myself from various sources.  What makes it especially interesting is to see how on target he was – every day right now, every time I hear the news or read an online financial article, I see exactly what he was predicting playing out.  Whereas someone might have discounted what he wrote even two years ago as unlikely and alarmist, now it’s almost eery to see how on target he was.

Last February, long before there was any news or discussion about it, I became very concerned about the economy, and shared that privately with some of you.  I’ve been asked about what my concerns were based on, and tried to succinctly respond by summing up several major factors, how they tied in together, and how they would affect all of us.  Larry Burkett has done a much better job than I ever could in explaining this!  I really recommend this book, to understand many aspects of the economy and why what we’re going through is happening. As I said, it’s clear and easy to read, unlike other books filled with graphs and technical jargon that I’ve found challenging to digest.

My ds told me he didn’t want to read it, because listening to me discuss the economy is depressing enough.  🙂  (He is reading it and enjoying it very much now.)  But I told him that I actually didn’t find it depressing at all – if anything, it almost cheered me up.  It’s bothered me for many months now to feel like I was seeing things that no one was expressing the slightest bit of concern about, and I felt bringing them up would cause me to be labeled paranoid (though now the regular news is a lot more alarming than what I shared with friends thirteen months ago).  Somehow it heartened me to see it all outlined just the way it was, to know what we’re really going to be dealing with and why, and that it’s not my overactive negative outlook (I’m not a pessimist by nature at all).   It’s always easier to deal with something concrete than something vague.  So go get it from your library and get educated!

Avivah