Greg will be performing with Texas Music Hall of Famer Ronnie Leatherman at a Grand Reopening of Creative Hair Design 8780 Hwy 16 South out in Pipe Creek Stylist. Come on out for great music and free refreshments. Call 830.535-6975 for more information.
I should think long and hard about a career as a finance writer. Going into this series I knew next to nothing about banking and banking practices except that I felt that I was always on the short end of the stick when dealing with them. It turns out that the banking industry is writing this for me – at least the villainous part of the tale. I probably don’t have the heart – unfortunately the end of the story always seems to drift towards the tragic.
I should preface this installment with my reiteration that the people here in Kerrville at Wells Fargo are some of the nicest and most customer service oriented people I know. They always have a smile for me and a biscuit for my dog at the drive through window. They count the change in my personal 401K plan each time I have to redeem my tin can full of quarters. It is not local and branch bank employees giving the industry a bad name and jeopardizing our economy, they are just doing their jobs and doing it well. I like my local bankers – I just can’t stand their bosses. Kind of like the sinner and the sin.
Not minutes after transmitting last month’s article I got the new list of “services and fees” from our old friend Wells Fargo. They added more fees and “products” with which to serve me. All of which added up to more fees for me and every customer at the bank. No added value or service to the customer – in fact the rule of thumb for the last decade or so regarding financial services has been, “less services at a higher cost.”
Wells Fargo has brought many new and innovative banking practices to the Hill Country since buying out Norwest. I’m sure many readers are familiar with some of these policies.
Local Check Cashing: Have you ever received a check from someone who banks at Wells Fargo? Have you ever shared with them your experience in cashing it? Wells Fargo charges people who do not hold Wells Fargo accounts $5 for the honor of honoring their checks. After checking your ID, getting your fingerprint and demanding you cash the check in the lobby if it is over a certain amount; they grudgingly fork over your money to the intended recipient. When I make that check out to the landscape company or another small contractor, I have to keep in mind that when I write the check for $100 it is really $95 if the person cashing the check wants to redeem it at my bank rather than deposit it. That is about as unethical as I thought you could get. It turns out that I lack imagination – there is no ethical “bottom” so to speak as new depths of consumer rip offs emerge almost daily.
Saving For The Future: Here’s a sweet deal that makes saving for the future with Wells Fargo idiotic.
Wells Fargo Money Market Savings Plan
* No fees for large balance or direct deposit.
Balance APY Bonus APY
$0 - $999.99 0.05% 0.55%
$1,000 - $2,499.99 0.15% 0.65%
$2,500 - $9,999.99 0.25% 0.75%
$10,000 or more 0.55% 1.06%
* Source: https://www.wellsfargo.com/savings_cds/moneymarket 02/22/08
In this wonderful savings scenario, and not the worst of those offered, you deposit $10,000 and get the super generous rate of 1.06% listed above, you will only lose about 3.5% or $340 annually against inflation. Ten years out your $10,000 is worth around $7,460. Ten years of saving gets you 25% less buying power. This is the same company that takes your hard-earned cash, pays you 1% and loans it to your neighbor at 13-32%. Guess where the difference goes? Well it ain’t the local economy.
Here’s another example of this same account “product” - if you had a balance of $299 in the account, your monthly interest earned would be about .16 cents. In the small print you may notice a monthly bank account service fee of $3-10.
Let’s take a look at this savings plan for the more down in their luck:
Working Stiff Savings Scenario: You deposit $299 in your savings account. You make and no further deposits and watch your money “grow.”
Each month at the low end rate of .05% you will earn a screaming 16 cents in interest on your savings. You will be assessed a $3-10 fee each month for being poor. With $10 monthly fees, at the end of the first year, your $299 has grown to $179. By the end of the second year you will be down to a $59 balance. The account will reach a zero balance (or more likely a negative balance – just because there is no money in the account doesn’t mean the fees will stop – they will still want to serve you) within the first quarter of year three. So the next time you hear an ad that says Wells Fargo is your partner for the future, it is a future of poverty they are talking about. Of course with a $1,000,000 deposit you will probably get a rate that almost matches inflation and a free toaster. If you have $100,000,000, you probably already have your retirement assets fully vested in a Cayman or Swiss bank. Hey I’m not an accountant but this is what Excel was spitting out using their published rates.
Most of the good news is actually just more bad news; but not all. In the case of Citibank, shares of Citigroup have plunged 42.5 percent during the last five months. That has to hurt even a Saudi Prince a little. Part of the reason could be traced to conversations much like the one I had with them last week. After making a reasonable settlement offer that was declined, I reminded my “customer service” rep that I didn’t create this problem – their banking “credit card reform” legislation was the cause. The response was classic:
“We didn’t change the laws, your elected representatives did.”
”Oh,” I replied, “So the hitman is guilty but the mafia Don who puts out the contract has no complicity?” That’s when my customer service conversation ended with Citigroup hanging up on me. I hope their stock continues to tank – after all, it is owned by the Saudis and now the Gulf Arab emirate of Abu Dhabi has picked up almost 5% of Citigroup.
Gee we are busting our butts and getting poorer to enrich our pals the Arabs so they can send another planeload of terrorists into the U.S. This is free trade at its neocon and patriotic best.
Recently another national banking firm familiar to Hill Country residents, Bank of America, decided to better serve their customers by massively raising the credit card account interest rates to between 700,000 and 2,000,000 of their customers. In most of these cases, the interest rate was raised 10% or more. What did these customers do to deserve this abrupt change in their accounts? Absolutely nothing. This is how Bank of America treats its customers in current good standing on their accounts. Bank of America is bleeding money with a horrifically bad portfolio and their solution is to make their customers pay for it. These account changes are not tied to the customer’s credit score and the criteria for choosing which customers will be targeted is not shared by the banks. In all fairness BOA will let you pay out the balance at your current interest rate but you have to surrender the card. There appears to be someone pulling on a crack pipe in the bathrooms at banking corporate headquarters. I can hear the gears turning in his/her drug-addled brain now.
“Let’s see. If we double the interest rate on our good customers there is a chance that they will either comply and pay up or pay off the balance in its entirety. If they don’t or can’t pay up we hit them with late fees, penalties and even more interest – giving us more cash in the next quarter and I will get the huge bonus I deserve for such brilliance. Snort. Snort.”
Of course 90 days out the bottom line will look a bit better but they will probably have a couple million less good customers and still have all the deadbeats. 180 days out, soon after our coke snorting bank exceutive cashes out his zillion dollar golden parachute for a job well done, the bank is in much worse shape. My abject apologies to all the crack heads, you’re not that stupid - only a banker could have this pipe dream.
All these practices are targeted at the consumer credit market. There are other factors in the credit sector that are also waiting like vampires to suck the lifeblood from our economy. Here are some other creatures that go bump in the night that you may be hearing about soon:
Sub-prime mortgages: There has been enough about this all over the media but suffice to say that lenders made some very bad loan products available that were sold deceptively and now the results are becoming apparent with the highest mortgage default rate in almost 30 years.
Credit Default Swaps: This Wall Street financial instrument came into being and was a new one on me – I’d never heard of it. When I saw the exposure of these companies and the value of what they are insuring, it took my breath away. This unregulated quasi-insurance product has been the rage of the decade and is a variation on the “derivative” investment strategies that served us so well in the 80’s. Off regulatory radar this industry has grown from $900 billion in 2000 to over $45 trillion now – twice the value of the entire U.S. Stock Exchange, according to the New York Times. How’s that for exposure? Citibank and BOA are both big players in this market.
Derivatives (especially swaps) expose investors to counterparty risk. For example, suppose a person wanting a fixed interest rate loan for his business, but finding that banks only offer variable rates, swaps payments with another business who wants a variable rate, synthetically creating a fixed rate for the person. However if the second business goes bankrupt, it can’t pay its variable rate and so the first business will lose its fixed rate and will be paying a variable rate again. If interest rates have increased, it is possible that the first business may be adversely affected, because it may not be prepared to pay the higher variable rate. This chain reaction effect worries certain economists who posit that since many derivative contracts are so new, the effect could lead to a large disaster. -Wikipedia
Overall Equity Devaluation: With a glut of foreclosures and more still on the horizon, home values have dropped as much as 20-30% in some markets. Although it starts in the housing industry with the building sector not far behind, many other equity holdings such as commercial real estate and over reckless leveraged buy-outs are soon to feel the pain. The stock market this year to date has been anything but rosy. That it is still above 10,000 is a testament to it heartiness and flexibility. The banks and Fed are financing all this activity too. It is not growing any sector of our economy except debt.
401K Wakeup Call: Make sure to pay close attention to your 401K statement for the first quarter of 2008. If you’re still growing your nest egg, you have a great administrator for your plan. It is more likely that you will see a significant decrease in your retirement funds. See last month’s installment for the chart showing how $144,000 can become $127,000 in ninety days flat.
So Where to From Here? One thing that is indisputable is that the U.S. economy, like all others, is a faith-based enterprise. It only works to the degree that the participants have faith in its strength, fairness and profitability. When markets lose money, investors lose faith and withdraw. Consumers feeling the value of their homes and retirement decreasing, circle the wagons, tighten their belts and make due with less. Boon or bust, bear or bull it is all about perception to investors.
Unfortunately our current administration has stood staunchly in the way of any kind of banking reform. Let me quote Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York
“…Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.”
A little ethics would go a long way. Perhaps the enforcement of current banking laws and their review might be in order. In their myopic view only 90 days out, the industry seems to be losing its view of the larger picture. Slow, steady and predictable growth would probably be favored by most investors and would certainly be better for our overall economy. I can hear the Right screaming, “Managed economies?!?! That’s communism!” Well sorry to have to fill you in but our economy has been managed for a long time by some of the greediest and most inept of the banking elite. Don’t forget that the Federal Reserve is not a Federal asset but a privately owned bank covering their butts and losses with our money.
As a consumer it is also time to step up to the bat and look at a life based on what you can afford rather than what you want. If you find this or a similar dialog going on in your head, “That gorgeous 41” HDTV down at Wal-Mart certainly is a steal at only $1099 and I have $2,000 left on my card…” STOP. THINK. Get out your calculator and figure what $1099 will cost you over three years at a low 13.9%. Trust me, it is no bargain. The best and only weapon against banking abuse is an old, tried and true method. Its called cash and carry.
Afterward: I would like to thank all the readers that shared their banking or credit card experiences with me. I received more email and comments on this article than any other to date. I didn’t think that a possible recession was on the minds of may local residents. Our economic malaise is not only in local minds but pocketbooks too.
I am happy to report that Wells Fargo and Bank of America were the only local banking entities I got complaints about. If you feel that I am being hard on banks, that the U.S. economy is going great, that bankers are benevolent and that everything is just fine, be sure to vote for John McCain this fall who has pledged more of the same if elected.
I’ve been watching the news over the last few months regarding the “sub prime” mortgage debacle and am bracing myself for the rest of the bad news. It appears that mortgage and housing problems are just the tip of the economic iceberg and that a hard-core credit crunch along with its accompanying recession is upon us. When I ask myself how things came to this, the only answer I can come up with is unethical and unbounded greed.
I am going to use the smallest sector of the economy I know of – myself - as the case in point for just how trusting and gullible a consumer can be and how greedy the banks are. I would like to apologize to the bankers here at my local branch of Wells Fargo. I understand that Kerrville bankers do not set national corporate policy and although there is blood on the hands of local bankers, the bloody knife itself is wielded by Wells Fargo corporate headquarters.
Like most Americans, I have credit cards. Prior to December 2006, I was what I consider to be the dream customer for my banks. I made my payments on time, usually about 30% above the minimum payment so that I would see some progress on the balance. I had five different credit accounts and but was able to budget my monthly debt service into my meager earnings. I was a good boy and was playing by the rules. I was a responsible credit consumer until the banks pushed me into being the bad credit demon writing article today.
While most Americans were asleep at the political wheel, the banking industry lobbied for credit “reform” and, like most well-funded corporate issues, the then-GOP Congress enacted the new bankruptcy bill; in effect closing the doors to personal bankruptcy. The primary reason was “bankruptcy abuse” which turned out to be a red herring when the hard data was in – many Americans entered bankruptcy for the most common of reasons – an inability to pay medical expenses. Now there was a new layer of protection for the banks from middle and lower class credit defaults.
Less than one month later, being the “customer oriented” folks that they are, the banks continued to kick the consumer while they were down by lobbying the GOP Congress for and getting yet another law passed that effectively doubled the monthly minimum payments on all credit card accounts. The banks dug their own grave with this witless piece of unmitigated greed disguised as “consumer credit reform.” Like most GOP “reforms” it was nothing of the kind. The bankers wanted a better looking bottom line for the next quarter and got it at the expense of driving a great deal of their loan portfolios into default over time. Here is how the banks go out of their way to “serve you better:”
Doubling of Monthly Minimums. My new credit card statements began arriving just 60 days after the legislation was enacted. Being self-employed, my income varies widely month to month but I have the math skills to average my income and predict how a given month will look. Before the legislation my monthly debt service at the minimum payment level was about $650 a month. I was proud of paying down consistently around $800 a month on these debts. A phrase, “pride before the fall” comes to mind.
My new “reformed” monthly minimum payment was now over $1100 a month; almost double what I signed on for. It was not many months after that I fell behind on one of my accounts. That is where the real fun began for the bankers.
Universal Default. This is another great program the banks and lenders have come up with to serve you (for lunch). When I fell 30 days behind on my Bank of America card, my other credit card companies decided to better serve me by knocking my 11.5% interest rate to 31% because I was under their “universal default” program. It made no difference to them that I was current on payments and always had been – I had come up short with their buddy Bank of America and I was going to pay. This banking policy kicked in with a vengeance and before I knew it I was in default with just about all my cards. Let’s take a look at a typical account.
Before Credit Reform: Monthly payments of around $800 which was $150 more than the minimum.
Just after Credit Reform: Monthly minimum jumps to around $1100 which was $300 more a month than could be possibly paid.
90 Days after Credit Reform: I fall in arrears with BOA and many of my creditors, regardless of payment history or current account status, jump on the default penalty bandwagon. For every month I run late or under the minimum, I am slammed with late fees, penalties and every other charge the banks can come up with. Even pouring more money into my credit black hole did no good. In less than a year, without putting another dollar on my cards, I have gone from good customer to scum of the earth defaulter with no legal recourse. My personal debt almost doubled over the next year (a usurious 31% on top of penalties, fees and other charges add up quickly) while the bankers thumb their noses at their customers.
Now, almost two years later, the chickens have come home to roost and the lenders are screaming for a bailout. They made billions of bad loans and somehow the American consumer is to blame? My question is why bail out the bankers who created these demonic banking products and not the consumers that are being preyed upon? The banks make horrifically bad business and policy decisions and now it is up to the U.S. taxpayer, the victims of these failed policies, to bail them out? Why don’t I ever hear about Congress bailing out consumers? The solvency of the bank’s shareholders (i.e. the Saudis) portfolio is paramount – the middle class can eat from dumpsters.
The rebuttal from the banks and collection agencies goes something like this, “You signed the agreement…” Yeah sure. Everyone I know reads the full text of their credit card agreement, even the 4-point font on the back page that has the really juicy stuff like how they can change the terms of the agreement at any time and for any or no reason. To me, that is not a contract but an open-ended attempt to make sure that I can be milked for every cent possible. Imagine any other business that demands you sign a contract that says in essence that there is only one side to the deal and the deal can be changed by the other party at any time.
For example I hire a roofing contractor (wish I could afford one) on his bid of $18,000 and when the work is completed he presents me with a $40,000 bill. This is not what we agreed to. The contractor’s rebuttal of “it was only an estimate and I did the work. You owe me 40,000” doesn’t hold water. We wouldn’t stand for this kind of treatment from any other industry sector but will stand meekly by while the banks rob us of our hard-earned money. This is all going on while the banking industry is spending billions on advertising themselves as, “your partner in success,” “helping you build your future” and telling us that, “our customers come first.”
Is this to say there is no place for personal responsibility? No, off course not. There are lots of people with credit cards that can’t make payments, never could and never will but I wasn’t one of them until the rules of the game were changed unilaterally. Is there no place for due diligence when vetting a customer for a loan?
From the U.S. House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions Oversight Hearing on Abusive Credit Card Practices is a list of practices that your banker uses to “serve you better:”
• Unfair and deceptive telephone and mail solicitation advertising misleading teaser rates to add-ons such as, “debt cancellation and freeze protection,” which are essentially insurance products dressed up in a weak regulatory structure to avoid state insurance regulators.
• Unfair penalty interest rates, sometimes as high as 35% or more, including the widespread practice of the previously mentioned “universal default.”
• Imposing punitive penalty interest rates retroactively, that is on prior balances.
• Imposing higher late payment fees, often levied under dubious circumstances, even when consumers mail in payments 10-14 days in advance.
• Utilizing billing cycle trickery such as changing the due date, making the due date a Sunday but not posting on the weekend and shortening the time between when a bill is mailed out and when the payment is due.
• Increasingly targeting bad or unknown credit risks such as students or persons with a previous poor credit history as the “growth sector” of their portfolios. How many times have you seen the moniker: “Bad Credit? No Credit? No Problem” from businesses that want to charge usurious rates? I thought this was mainstream banking we’re talking about - not pawn shops
• Imposing unfair, pre-dispute mandatory arbitration as a term in credit card contracts to prevent consumers from exercising their full rights in court and the growing use of these arbitration clauses in unfair debt collection schemes.
• The practice of baiting and switching balances from one card to another. When you transfer a balance from one card to another because of a lower interest rate, it changes your credit score, at least with that lender – you now have a larger line of credit than was offered when the card went into effect. Now, because your balance is larger due to their come-on, you are a higher credit risk and the interest rate rises again.
• Reducing credit limits unilaterally and without advance notification to the customer.
I’m not sure how many local banks are using these practices. Wells Fargo is the only local bank I have experience with. I tried to contact them for comment or rebuttal, but repeated calls have gone unreturned. The bank is still welcome to rebut any of my arguments above in the next installment.
If you are seeing similar practices at other local banks, please let me know and I will see how they respond to your concerns. As many of these practices, in terms of ethics and customer service, are indefensible, I expect to quote a great deal of, “No comments” even locally.
Florida/Texas Creationists
I was thinking about Texas (home) and Florida. What would happen if the Supreme Court decided that ALL education was completely a state’s rights issue?
What would happen if Texas and Florida decided that biblical (no caps on purpose) science is the only thing to be taught in public schools?
Fifteen - twenty years go by and Texans are wondering why they are all so poor and can’t find decent jobs. Everyone is doing manual labor or cleaning pools except of course their corporate and secular bosses. That’s my silver lining - the world is generally run by the smarter and better educated. The theocons are grooming their kids for slavery. They want conformity - not ingenuity.
I submit that the theocons would get even more irate because they would perceive their corporate employers as discriminating against Texans and Floridians because of their religion; not their ignorance. Corporate HQ needs people that can think and these states can’t provide thinkers.
I know that the big corporations love compliant, dumb and low-paid workers but somebody has to run the office and make strategic company decisions. I doubt that there are many sane stockholders, Christians included, that want corporate policy to be faith driven.
I can’t for the life of me figure out why Christian parents would want to hobble their children into a life of menial and low-paid jobs. Only so many of them can punch tickets at the Creation Museum - even at minimum wage.
Posting on YouTube about how it seems that Ted Nugent’s antics over big guns hiding his insecurity concerning the size of his penis.
August 25, 2007
Message:
lol, Liberals make me laugh, your comment on nugent displayed your ignorance. Of course its more important to have a bigger gun than a bigger dick, you fool. What world do you live in, This is a world of evil people that want to kill you, WHAT IS DOES THE SIZE OF A MAN’s PENIS have to do with ANYTHING. LOL, wow, Liberals are so ignorant its hilarious. Good luck with that…HAHAHAHAHA
Hey Gayle,
OK. Support your theory and post a video of your dick and your gun. We’ll see which is bigger. Wouldn’t want your friends to think you have a little gun would ya?
Ted Nugent is just a has-been like Chuck Norris who can’t get a decent gig in their chosen field. Why? They suck at what they do. Norris can’t act and Nugent can’t play anything but cliché licks from Rock Star Guitar 101. When was the last time Nugent saw his name on any chart in the last 30 years? When was the last time someone tried to assault his home? The dude is paranoid AND a loser.
For shit’s sake I have a .223 Mini 14 w/30 round bananas, Glock 17, modified Ruger 10-22 and a Chinese AK47 knockoff with a 200 round rotary mag. Scares the shit out of little-dicked guys. Also a couple of plinking 22s. In terms of armament, I’m hung like a horse but still try to feed my dick better than my gun.
Let’s play a quick round of FlatuBrain™
My doorbell rings and when I answer it I am greeted by a man who looks horrible. He is on crutches and has a cast on one arm. Both of his eyes are black, his nose is broken and his whole face is black, blue and swollen.
“Hi Greg. Last night I was assaulted and beaten senseless by ruthless gang members. You owe me big time.”
“I do?” I reply, “How do you figure that?”
“I took the beating so you wouldn’t have to. That’s why you owe me.”
I dissect his argument and close the door. A minute later I pass by the window and see him down the street. My visitor is no longer is using crutches, nor does he have any bandages or signs of a beating and he is merrily strolling down the street. Obviously there was no beating.
And you ask, “And the point is . . .?”
The next person who knocked on my door told me that Jesus died for my sins.
What I Believe , (or think I do)
An ongoing dialog with myself
Head Scratching Essay by Greg Forest
I believe I know very little and am incapable of knowing much more. Regardless of how well read, traveled or studied I am, there is more knowledge out there than I could ever dream of assimilating. The core problem is my senses and physical vessel. They are very limited. Until I can see in the infrared and x-ray spectrums, hear sub and ultrasonic sounds and fly like Superman at superluminal speeds, and of course process and store this information in something faster and larger than my existing brain case, a great deal of the universe will remain outside the event horizon of my perception.
I don’t feel badly about it though - the smartest person on Earth knows only a fractional amount more than I do when the body of things to know in the Universe is the knowledge base. I also believe I may be much more empowered in relating to my corner of reality than is apparent. We are all just peeking through a sensory pinhole at the Universe. Know-It-All types generally know even less than me. Most people actually know very little about themselves much less the Universe. An example that comes to mind is that most people have no idea how others perceive them.
I believe that there are some things within the grasp of my wonder, amazement and occasionally even understanding. The brain I have to work with may be inadequate to the task of understanding the Universe but I can make some observations and speculations within the time, bandwidth and intellectual spectrum I have to work with. I don’t really want ALL the knowledge in the Universe. I don’t feel I need to know the exact orbital period of a moon around a planet halfway across the galaxy. Even with my strongest wishful thinking it is not likely to be an immediate travel destination.
I believe that I alone am responsible for authoring my life’s mission statement. There are many who would have me use their mission statement in life. I believe it is not in my best interest to follow the mission statements of others or to base my beliefs on something marketed like a product off the shelf of a Wal-Mart.
more later…
Greg’s Bible Word Study
made possible in part by http://www.biblegateway.com
I have been going through the Bible to see how many times different words and concepts appear in it and their ratio to one another. The results are very interesting and I think that this corner of Bible research will bear freethinking fruit.
Let’s take a look at some words in the “Good Book” and see at what frequency they occur. This first pass is using the liberal New International Version (NIV) Bible (fewer mentions of unicorns-only 9). I expect the results to get even more interesting when examining the King James Version. It is my contention that if you strip the Bible down to its component words, the result is anything but “good” news.
Of course this study is through the lens of my agnostic & liberal bias - especially in terms of context. For example, I look at “peace” as a “good” concept and “war” as a bad one. If you have some words or concepts you would like to test, please email them to me.
The results - the “words of God,” speak for themselves.
Word Frequency KJV/NIV
Word # of Occurrences
GOOD 778
EVIL 707
.
LOVE/AFFECTION 442
HATE/DESPISE 420
LIFE 412
DEATH 346
.
WAR 1225
PEACE 420
.
DESTROY 433
CREATE 45
.
FEAR 501
FEAR NOT 103
.
MAN 4536
.
WOMAN 347
DAUGHTER 505
HARLOT 48
WHORE 65
VIRGIN 64
WIFE 373
CONCUBINE 37
WOMAN (Sum) 1439
.
KILL 215
SLAY 145
SMITE 133
Killing Sum 493
.
HEAL 160
FORGIVE 95
.
SERVANT/SLAVE 926
FREE MAN 26
.
NO PITY/PITY NOT 34
PITY 9
.
DRUNK 77
SOBER 15
.
LIE 902
TRUTH 224
.
SAD 52
HAPPY 25
.
PLAGUE 107
FAMINE 94
PROSPER 91
.
TERRIBLE 55
WONDERFUL 25
.
WEAK 57
STRONG 259
.
FALLEN 83
UPLIFTED 0
.
KNOW NOT 481
KNOWLEDGE 191
.
OBEY 240
REVOLT/REBEL 114
RARE OR ODD BIBLICAL CONCEPTS - NUMBER OF TIMES MENTIONED IN BIBLE
FREEDOM 2
EQUALITY 1
UNICORN 9
TALKING DONKEYS 1
EDUCATE 0
.
Slacker Manor
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
