Tuesday, April 26, 2016

JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS: Roads I Have Traveled . . . Transition Journal Excerpt # 3

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist


(continued): Harare, Zimbabwe, 1985-1986: Every dictator who desires to rise to power in a Lesser Developed Country promises the people two things to gain their political support: a better health-care delivery system and electricity to the rural areas. None of those who make such promises, that I have ever met, were capable of delivering on either promise. So, it did not come to me as a surprise that the Zimbabwean delegation was very interested in investigating the possibilities of acquiring both electrical and health-care items for their country. While I was in Zimbabwe I would try to help them with meeting those needs, since health-care and electricity were so important to the economic development of the country.

Upon arriving in Zimbabwe I began working almost immediately with them on an exciting project dealing with their neighbor, Zambia. I was taken out and shown how the grain storage facilities in Zimbabwe were full and running over with maize.

For three years they had experienced bumper crops, and they had run out of room to store the grain.

The reason we had purchased the burlap sacks while in US was for the storage of the overflow. I was shown stacks and stacks of sacks of maize covered with black plastic. The stacks were the size of very large buildings. But the rain was getting in from the top and the rodents were getting in from the bottom.

 And all the while the tribes across the Zambezi River in Zambia were starving to death. The irony was that Zambia was rich in copper production. However, the price of copper had plummeted and no one was buying Zambia’s copper.

As I surveyed the situation, it looked to me like there existed a great opportunity to simply put some uncomplicated trades together and make some enormous profits in a new and overripe field of opportunity. For hundreds of years Africa had suffered tribal conflicts and lacked any developed system of economics or a basic understanding of economic factors. Someone like me could come upon a situation like this and make a whole lot of money.

It should have been a very simple deal for Zimbabwe and Zambia to have structured a fundamental counter exchange, like trading excess maize for devalued copper, and made it come out beneficial for all concerned. But tribal differences, and the lack of any established method for transacting the international exchange, left both countries in a negative position. It took someone who was neutral and on the outside to step in and broker the deal. Acting in that role as “deal broker” could result in huge profits in a continent like Africa.

As I was thinking along this line, suddenly God reminded me of my commitment that I had made to Him well over fifteen years earlier: I would stop earning and storing up wealth for myself and give the rest of my life helping other people. But why then was I in Africa working with the very top people in power. I was learning a great deal about how the international world worked, but what was my specific role to be in all of what I was witnessing?

I decided to stay out of participating in any of the profits of any of the new ventures, and I simply stood on the sidelines and coached the teams. I showed my friends in Zimbabwe how they could get rid of their inventory of maize before they lost any more of the production. I showed them how to rent warehouse space in London to store the copper until the world price once again stabilized. When the price went back up they could sell the copper and make a lot of profit and at the same time they would have salvaged their precarious maize situation and saved the lives of a lot of starving folks in the meantime. Many of the hungry people of Zambia ended up with supplies of maize that helped fill their empty tummies.

While grappling with the African situation and my economic role for the future, I also had a chance to re-evaluate my commitment to doing good and not taking advantage of the business deals for myself that were so obviously available internationally. I vividly recalled some episodes in the life of my sometimes hero, Armand Hammer. He had been faced with similar temptations. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Hammer visited the ravaged areas of the Russian Ural Mountains. He had witnessed the sickness and starvation and had told Lenin that he would with his own personal money purchase a million dollars’ worth of grain and bring it to Russia to save the starving people. He had been moved with great compassion.

But by the time his shipments of grain had arrived in Russia, he had seen a phenomenal opportunity to pillage very valuable Russian antiquities from the dethroned Czar’s wealth. Instead of simply giving the grain to the Russians as he had offered, he changed the deal and insisted that they fill the ships that had brought the grain with the valuable Russian antiquities for his own keeping. There was no gifting at all!

I didn’t want to renege on my commitment to God. I allowed the Zimbabwe situation to strengthen and reinforce my earlier promises. I remembered the old adage: The final temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right thing for just the wrong reason.

I did the best I could to help Zimbabwe get their economy established, but there was considerable push back from some of the military generals who had just discovered a lot of new power and had designs on reaping a lot of benefits from their new positions of power. Even while I was in Harare, I overheard President Mugabe’s generals remind the president that he had gotten where he was because of their bravery and their fighting expertise, and he owed them for their loyalty and they expected to receive consideration.

At that point I knew that my days of usefulness as a successful economist in Zimbabwe were pretty much over. Any idealistic dreams President Mugabe may have had for establishing a democratic free market economy in his new Zimbabwe would be swallowed up by the greed and entitlement corruption of those close to him. That spirit of greed and entitlement would be contagious, and it did not appear to me that the President had the resolve to counter it.

Next Week: The idea and practice of International Debt Swaps. 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   
Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House
  

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

UPDATE! New of the New Book Better Off

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist


This is fun! Endorsements for the new book are rolling in. Take a look:

Better Off (non-fiction), by Dr. James W. Jackson (author), 2016, Winston Crown Publishing, should be required reading for every young person in the US and anyone else looking for an understandable primer on economics. 
Dr. Jackson has managed to compress into 200 pages or so an entire college level course on economics. He takes on the current political campaign fascination with redistribution of wealth and offers a more American way of achieving success so that everyone is Better Off. In addition he uses his considerable international experience to highlight examples of humanitarian principles, which benefit millions of persons worldwide. His hopeful and positive approach toward a sometimes controversial and often misunderstood subject (economics) was refreshing. His personal insights and commentaries were spot on, supporting his logical arguments about what really creates wealth. I would expect this book could be a catalyst for a new American renaissance and spur an economic recovery in the US if policy makers and politicians would put this into action. A must read for anyone hoping for an alternative to the current debate about what really creates and sustains wealth. He makes it clear that America has succeeded in the past because of the unique economic and cultural experiment of 1776.
Dr. James W. Terbush: U.S. Command Surgeon, NORAD/Northcom, Homeland Security
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Even for those who studied economics in college, the fundamental ideas that comprise the ‘economic way of thinking’ too often remain elusive. In this uniquely-styled, and very enjoyable book, Dr. Jackson provides important historical context while revealing the economic reasoning skills that will help people achieve success in their personal, business and civic lives. I highly recommend this excellent book which is a fitting tribute to a remarkable teacher-of-teachers, Dr. Paul Ballantyne, one of the giants of economic education.
Robert L. Clinton: former President, Colorado Council for Economic Education    President of the Colorado Council for Economic Education from 2000-2015, also member of the board of directors of both the national Council for Economic Education and the National Association of Economic Educators  

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I absolutely loved this book. Dr Jackson made the principles of economics easy and actually enjoyable to learn and then built on that to explain how the USA used these principles to become the greatest economy in the history of the world. Then he shows you how to apply these principles in your own life and inspires us by showing us how to succeed by making other people better off. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Jonathan Manske, Author, Coach: Law of Attraction

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Dr. Jackson has a gift for bringing economics to life in a clear and conversational way. He provides a real service with this book, explaining the keys to economic success, and how we might lose our way if we forget these keys. He has seen much in his life that he brings to bear in this fine book, and it is a particularly important read for young people today. Good planning and hard work resulted in the achievement, creativity and productivity that has enabled Americans to be Better Off. This could be jeopardized if we are not aware of the economic realities this book so well describes.
Nicholas Muller, Attorney at Law

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For those of you who received an advance copy of Better Off: How America got Wealthy and you can too!, you still have until April 29th to get your response submitted to: press@winstoncrown.com  



Thanks for making this important project so enjoyable!

Next week we continue with the saga of the Transition Journal of The Roads I Have Traveled. 


© Dr. James W. Jackson   
Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House
  
Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS:Roads I Have Traveled. . . Transition Journal Excerpt # 2

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist


(continued): Indianapolis , 1984: Shortly after the Chicago meeting, and because I had attended the meeting, I was invited to participate in a special economic focus meeting held in Indianapolis, Indiana, sponsored by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In the welcoming speech of the gathering we were told, “You are all economists and we have brought you together to brainstorm on how to develop practical economies for Lesser Developed Countries. You are asked to be just as creative as possible with such economic components as counter trade and barter, cottage industries, micro lending, incentive credits, or anything else you can think of. There are no holds barred as you put your economic models together.”

The meeting hosts went on to explain that the people living in the Lesser Developed Countries would remain in bondage as long as they were controlled by repressive and manipulated governments. Some changes would need to take place to free them from the systems of closed and oppressive economies.

We were divided into teams, seated at large round tables, and instructed to “get to work.” After going through the expected steps in the grouping process so that we could all comfortably work together, we really began having fun. We played with the concepts of scarcity-choice-cost; land, labor, capital, and the entrepreneur; supply and demand; as well as methods of fiscal responsibility and closed economies vs. free markets. We discussed the need to have a responsible government that could guarantee the enforcement of contracts and agreements. We built in a component for the necessity of having exclusive rights of private property to hold or transfer, and free enterprise with the possibility of personal incentives and profit. At our table we included anything else we could think of to work into the mix.

At one of the coffee breaks, a woman came up to me and said, “I really like what you have been saying. It makes a lot of sense to me. My name is Maxine Partee and I am the personal representative of Mr. Robert Mugabe, the new president of Zimbabwe in Africa. In the past you probably knew our country as Rhodesia. As you may be aware, we just recently took over the government of Zimbabwe from the Ian Smith regime, and we have great plans and hopes for the future of the country. In fact, many of the Whites, including Mr. Smith, are staying in some of the government positions so that we can have good continuity.”

Then Mrs. Partee went on: “As I listened to you I thought, he needs to come to Harare and help us. Would you ever consider coming to Zimbabwe and working with Robert Mugabe’s Cabinet? You see, we have discovered that we don’t know very much about running the economy of a government.”

When I regained my balance, I smiled and asked, “But Mrs. Partee, just what is it that I would be expected to do?”

“Oh, I really don’t know for sure what you would do, but I do know for sure that you are the one who needs to come and help us.”

“Well,” I replied, “let’s correspond about this and see what happens.”



True to her word, Mrs. Partee fired back a letter to me just as soon as she returned to Africa and had a chance to talk to the president. After an exchange of messages, Mr. Mugabe sent his nephew, Mr. Chickowore, who was on the president’s Cabinet as Minister of Transportation, and a financial man of Indian descent, Mr. Mukadam, along with Mrs. Maxine Partee to visit me in Colorado. They stayed in the US for about a month, and while they were here I helped them purchase burlap sacks that they needed, and other items for Zimbabwe.

One of the things that Mr. Chickowore had requested I help him locate for Zimbabwe was medical supplies and equipment for their district and local hospitals and clinics. When he made his request, it jogged my memory that back in 1984, two other African men had also requested that I help them find medical goods for their countries in Africa. One man was Mr. Edward Wilson, a member of one of the royal families in Kenya. He had returned to Africa and had been assassinated before I could help him. The other had been a Mr. John Matthews, who not only wanted medical goods but also for me to come to Africa and teach economic seminars.

We took the Zimbabwean group to a facility called Lake X-Ray in Michigan and introduced them to David Davis, who specialized in selling over-stocked medical inventories and used medical equipment. While my visitors from Zimbabwe and I were in the Michigan and Indiana area, we also visited typical industrial locations and fabricating plants in the South Bend, Indiana area introducing them to manufacturing representatives and production suppliers for future contacts. While there they also asked to tour some typical American hospitals and clinics in the areas.

Before we made our way to Evergreen, Colorado, we flew the group to Albuquerque, New Mexico to visit an electrical power generating plant that was being remodeled. The generating equipment that was being replaced was being offered for sale, and we were all curious to see if it would be feasible to procure the used equipment and transport it to Zimbabwe.

We had lots of opportunity to talk and get acquainted with Mr. Chickowore, Mr. Mukadam, and Mrs. Partee while we traveled together. When they returned to Africa a short time later, I returned to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, with them.

Next Week: My economic consulting stint in Zimbabwe with President Mugabe.

© Dr. James W. Jackson
Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

www.jameswjackson.com 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS: Roads I Have Traveled. . .Excerpt # 1 Transition Journal

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

WOW!
Thanks for the great response to the "Let's Make a Deal."
We were able to scrape up enough advance PR books to take care of those who responded. Some of you had your request in nearly before the blog finished posting! Looking forward to your endorsement blurbs! Hope you enjoy!!!
       __________________________________________________________________  

(Chicago): 1984: More and more often people, who have read either the printed excerpts from my travel journals or the actual journals, express a curiosity regarding the early days of Project C.U.R.E. Usually, their questions run something like this: "We know the story of how you and Anna Marie gave away your wealth and started life over again with a determination to help other people be better off. But the next scene has you in Brazil, getting emotionally hammered by the overwhelming need for donated medical goods to be sent into the developing countries of the world. How did you get from being a successful businessman and entrepreneur to being an economic consultant to the president of Brazil and his top government economists? And how did Project C.U.R.E. get started out of all of that?"

Let me see if I can help fill in some of the blank spaces. That period of time is crowded with lots of dots, and without some navigational help from someone who was there at the time it is nearly impossible to connect all those dots by meaningful lines.

After leaving Jackson Brothers Investments I closed my gates at our home and wrote an award winning book that was first published in 1982 titled, What'cha Gonna Do With What'cha Got? That project trained over ten thousand Christian leaders to return to their thousands of church and para-church constituents and train them in the ideas of basic economics and stewardship.

To a large degree, the success of our earlier business ventures in the Jackson Brothers Investments company had resulted from our ability to understand and employ the basic concepts of simple, old-fashioned counter trade and barter techniques. The fundamental principle underlying a successful barter transaction, and the basis for all successful free market endeavors, is that everybody in the deal must end up "better off."

Based on some of the barter and trade concepts that I had included in the book, What'cha Gonna do with What'cha Got?, I received a call from some folks whom I did not know. I guess they had heard that I had been involved in bartering and trading in the past, and they asked if I would be willing to travel to Chicago and meet with them. I agreed to be there.

On April 17, 1984, I showed up at the meeting held in the penthouse of the Ambassador West Hotel in Chicago. Their purpose for the meeting was to discuss concepts of international counter trade and barter that would result in increased market share for their different and individual businesses in Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs).

They wanted to bypass the manipulation and corruption of the dictators and their cohort governments, who were skimming revenues off the top of the countries' economies by means of exorbitant inflation and phony currency exchange rates. They also were aiming to learn about international legal concepts and experiences in order to avoid pitfalls in developing their own counter trade programs in the LDCs.

In attendance were some of the top leaders in US commerce and international business. I shared what I knew about the subject with the group, but as they began to discuss their experiences and needs, I began to listen very carefully. There was such a great need for what they were trying to accomplish in the global economy!

Many of the issues they were trying to work through reminded me of what Armand Hammer, one of my entrepreneurial heroes, had encountered as an international businessman. Creativity and ingenuity would be the answer to working around the greed, corruption, and bureaucracy of the Third World markets and governments.

About half way through the guarded sessions, I began to realize that I was not there so much because I had a lot of magic bullets to offer, but I was there because there were things being said and concepts being proposed that I needed to hear. My thinking began to change during and after that Chicago meeting.

Next Week: An invitation from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank

© Dr. James W. Jackson
Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

www.jameswjackson.com 


Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com