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Kindly Note:
This presentation is solely intended to be general
information that might be beneficial to stewards of
all types. Please do not consider it to be counsel that
you should act upon without researching in-depth
and/or consulting your various financial, legal or
spiritual advisors. “Affinity marketers,”
particularly in the religious communities, have too
often hurt our faith and investors. We hope to help
change that. But be prudent. While “the workman is
worthy of his wages,” be particularly careful if you
sense the presenter is more interested in your
business than the ethic of the Abrahamic faiths.
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Dr. David Miller, former investment banker,
author of God at Work and current Director
of the Princeton University Faith & Work
Initiative reviewed this seminar and wrote:
“Remember the old brokerage firm ad, ‘When
E.F. Hutton talks, people listen’? Today’s
version should be, ‘When Gary Moore talks,
concerned Americans should listen.’ Moore’s
insights into financial planning with ethical and
spiritual integrity should be mandatory study in
every college, seminary and investment firm.”
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“With gratitude to The Financial Seminary, the
Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility has
used the material presented in a wide variety of
member programs and welcomes the opportunity
to at long last have the entire presentation to
share with their members and friends in
congregations throughout the United States.”
Laura Berry
Executive Director
ICCR
(300 Religious Institutional
Investors Stewarding $100 Billion)
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This is an advanced seminar that seeks to prompt
a deeper, more enriching way of thinking and
seeing our world, and then acting upon that
perspective, which is largely what religion is
when it comes to economics. So we suggest you
simply relax and listen to your presenter, take
the handouts home to study, and perhaps go
online to www.financialseminary.org to review
the presentation, including the presenter’s
comments.
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Financial Fusion:
Re-Integrating Faith & Wealth Management
Copyright @ Financial Seminary 2010
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This seminar was created by Gary Moore.
He has a degree in political science and was
a senior vice president of investments with
a major Wall Street investment firm
during the late ’80’s before founding The
Financial Seminary. He has served on the
boards of the John Templeton Foundation, Opportunity
International, The Crystal Cathedral, Messiah College and
Empower America, as well as his local YMCA, Samaritan
Ministries and church. He has been a commentator for UPI.
You will immediately notice that he does not teach with
authority but as a “wounded healer” who has learned from
others wiser than himself, to whom he is most grateful.
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Yet, despite the claims of “prosperity theology” and “name it
and claim it religion,” nothing Gary has learned the past
twenty-five years has challenged the old wisdom regarding
wealth and the eye of the needle. John Wesley, the founder of
Methodism, taught that the thrift and work ethic of the
Puritan approach to Christianity would inevitably enrich a
nation; but that wealth would likely destroy the morality that
created it. The recent experiences of our nation should make
us wonder if Wesley might have had a point. So it is Gary’s
hope that this seminar might simply help a few dedicated souls
to make a most difficult journey, one that Christ said is
“impossible for man but possible with God.”
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Gary grew up in a devout but poor home.
As he grew older and prospered, he
increasingly experienced the tensions
between faith and wealth. He also saw
how that was affecting him and his
friends, both mentally and spiritually. He
thought of attending seminary but discovered they
didn’t deal with these issues any longer. He also found
the church to be of little help. Yet he did find two
“modern prophets,” both now deceased, who were
instrumental to any progress he might have made.
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“Religious views are important to whatever
anyone does--investing, writing articles,
anything. How you see yourself in relation
to others and your Creator, why, it’s the
most important thing that there is because
you think most clearly only if you’re at
peace with yourself and your Creator.”
Sir John Templeton
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“This extraordinary man believes that successful
investing is a product of a person’s overall
relationship to life, to the universe. Unlike most
of us, Templeton is at peace with himself. He has
sorted things out. He believes that God created
and is creating the universe. This gives
Templeton extra mental energy to make and
stand by his decisions.”
Forbes
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“The individual needs the return to spiritual
virtues, for he can survive in the present human
situation by reaffirming that man is not just a
biological and psychological being but also a
spiritual being, that is creature, and existing for
the purposes of his Creator and subject to him.”
Peter Drucker
Landmarks of Tomorrow
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“Peter Drucker’s ability to prophesy--almost
always correctly--was uncanny.”
Steve Forbes
The Wall Street Journal
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Q#1: Do other thoughtful people and history agree
we should, even could, go back to the future?
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A#1: Definitely!
“One cannot understand current political or
ethical trends, or properly forecast future
economic developments, without
understanding the cycles in religious
feelings in American history.”
Robert Fogel, Ph.D.
Nobel Laureate in Economics
& Religious Skeptic
The Fourth Great Awakening
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“Rather than denigrating Christianity and religion in
general, socially conscious elites ought to be asking
what the religious impulse can teach us.”
Robert L. Bartley
Editor Emeritus
The Wall Street Journal
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“If we do not manage our affairs both spiritually and
socially in a responsible manner, we will inevitably
come to regret it later.”
The Dalai Lama
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“I wish that on every bedside table, next to the
Bible, there was an article explaining the
nature of investing, because people are still
either too confused, intimidated or busy to
know what to do.”
Peter Lynch
Former Manager
Fidelity Magellan Fund
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“It is embarrassing to live in the most comfortable time
in the history of man and not be happy. Auden called
his era the age of anxiety. I think what was at the heart
of the dread in those days, just a few years into
modern times, was that we could tell we were
beginning to lose God. And it is a terrible thing when
people lose God. Life is difficult and people are afraid,
and to be without God is to lose man’s great source of
consolation and coherence. I don’t think it is
unconnected to the boomers’ predicament that as a
country we were losing God just as they were being
born.”
Peggy Noonan
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
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“The people who created this country built a moral
structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited
luxury and self-indulgence. For centuries, it remained
industrious, ambitious and frugal. Over the past thirty
years, much of that has been shredded… The
country’s moral guardians are forever looking out for
decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the
most rampant decadence today is financial decadence,
the trampling of decent norms about how to use and
harness money.”
by
ohn B
Introduction to Enough
By John Bogle
Founder, The Vanguard Funds
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“The idea that economic crises, like the current
financial and housing crisis, are mainly caused
by changing thought patterns goes against
standard economic thinking. But the current
crisis bears witness to the role of such changes in
thinking. It was caused precisely by our
changing confidence, temptations, envy,
resentment, and illusions—and especially by
changing stories about the nature of the
economy.”
Animal Spirits
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The Credit Crisis & Great Recession
“The word credit derives from the Latin
credo, meaning ‘I believe.’”
Animal Spirits
By Ackerloff & Schiller
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A#2: And history suggests we can!
“The business cycle is a psychological phenomenon.
Only when the memory of hard times has dimmed
can confidence fully establish itself; only when
confidence has led to outrageous excess can it be
checked. It was as difficult for Mr. Hoover to stop
the psychological pendulum on the downswing as it
had been for the Reserve Board to stop it on the
upswing.”
Fredrick Lewis Allen
Editor of Harper’s Magazine
Explaining the Great Depression
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“The 1929 breakdown was at its roots, a moral
breakdown. We were not living right. We had
become extravagant. We had become intoxicated
by the alluring notion that the royal road to riches
did not lie through sweat but speculation. We
discarded and scorned old-fashioned virtues.”
B.C. Forbes
Founder, Forbes Magazine
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“The sins of Big Business and High Finance were
responsible for the over-whelming voting of the
New Deal into power. Therefore, any and every
act calculated to bring business into disrepute is
infinitely regrettable.”
Forbes Magazine
July 1, 1944
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“In the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, Americans are
fed up with Washington and convinced by more than 3
to 1 that the nation is heading in the wrong direction.”
USA Today
February 16, 2010
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Miserable
+13%
Source: The Economist
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“The wealth of a nation is not to be found by
asking a statistically significant, random sample
of people to have a stab at it. What people think,
still less what they say, is not a good guide to the
way the world is. People don’t know.”
The Economist
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Angry
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Source: The Economist
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WSJ, September 15, 2010
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“The problem with the tax debate is not that
Democrats and Republicans disagree, but that
they mostly agree. Democrats think 98% of
Americans should not pay higher taxes; the
Republicans say 100% should not. Taxes this year
will come to less than 15% of GDP, the lowest
share since 1950… Raising taxes on the rich
would lift the ratio to only 20%. That is nowhere
near enough to pay for federal spending,
estimated at 24% of GDP in 2020.”
The Economist
September 18, 2010
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Source: Perotcharts.com
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And
Depressed
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“It’s very interesting to me that the spread of
communications has increased the misery
of people…we’re flooded with bad news.
And this bad news is making people
depressed at a time when prosperity is at
its greatest ever.”
Sir John M. Templeton
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“There has always been something in human
nature which makes you buy a newspaper
which has the most horrible headline.
Therefore, to be successful in the publishing
or television business, you have to feed the
public these catastrophes or the negative
viewpoint. Therefore the public is
brainwashed.”
Sir John Templeton
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“The agenda of the world-the issues and items that
fill our newspapers and newscasts-is an agenda
of fear and power. A huge network of anxious
questions surrounds us and begins to guide
many, if not most, of our daily decisions. Clearly
those who pose these questions which bind us
have true power over us. Jesus seldom accepted
the questions posed to him. He exposed them as
coming from the house of fear. They did not
belong in the house of God.”
Henri Nouwen
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“Politicians earn much of their living by
exploiting anxieties, encouraging people to
feel worse than they should about the state
of their country.”
The Economist
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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep
the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous
to be led to safety—by menacing it with an
endless series of hobgloblins, all of them
imaginary.”
H.L. Mencken
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“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest
bidder.”
George Washington
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Proving some things are indeed eternal,
a prominent politician has said:
“Our government in Washington now is a horrible
bureaucratic mess. It is disorganized, wasteful, has no
purpose, and its policies—when they exist—are
incomprehensible or devised by special interest groups with
little or no regard for the welfare of the average American
citizen. The American people believe that we ought to control
our government. On the other hand, we’ve seen our
government controlling us.”
Governor Jimmy Carter
1976, Dow Jones Apx 800
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“No matter how serene today may be, tomorrow is always
uncertain. Don’t let that reality spook you. Throughout
my lifetime, politicians and pundits have constantly
moaned about terrifying problems facing America. Yet
our citizens now live an astonishing six times better
than when I was born. The prophets of doom have
overlooked the all-important factor that is certain:
Human potential is far from exhausted and the
American system for unleashing that potential remains
alive and effective.”
Warren Buffett
Letter to shareholders 2011 50
“The deficit is not a meaningless figure, only a
grossly overrated one…Our politicians have
conjured the deficit into a bogeyman with which
to scare themselves. In symbolizing the
bankruptcy of our political process, the deficit
has become a great national myth with enormous
power. But behind the political symbol, we need
to understand the economic reality, or lack of it.
In the advanced economic literature, the big
debate is whether deficits matter at all.”
Robert Bartley
Editor
The Wall Street Journal
Seven Fat Years, 1992
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“When Americans look at their economy
these days, they are horrified by what they
see, or think they see. Economic paranoia
has become an American habit. America
worries as it prospers.”
The Economist
Sam, Sam, The Paranoid Man
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Extraordinary Popular Delusions
&
The Madness of Crowds
“‘This time is different’ are the four most
expensive words in the English language.”
Sir John M. Templeton
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Counting
Our Assets,
Or
Blessings,
For A
Change
www.whitehouse.gov/omb/2010budget
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A
B
C
D
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America’s Wealth
$125.5 Trillion Gross (A)
-7.2 Trillion Owed (B)
=$118.3 Trillion Net (C)
Source: OMB, White House
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“The size of the net foreign debt is relatively small
compared with the total stock of U.S. assets (D).
In 2007, it amounted to 7% of total assets
including education and R&D capital.”
Office of Management & Budget
The Bush White House
Budget of the U.S. Government
Fiscal Year 2009
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America’s Federal Debt to Assets
12.00%
10.00%
8.00%
6.00%
4.00%
2.00%
0.00%
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2007
Source: OMB in Bush White House 60