The Final Call

Land, Business and Gold: The Righteous Portfolio

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“…agriculture is going to be one of the most exciting professions in the next 10, 20 years. It's going to be the farmers driving the Lamborghinis going forward, not the stock brokers.” 
-Jim Rogers; Forbes interview; April 6, 2011

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Black Americans have a unique relationship with sports and entertainment. Spiritually we have been inspired by it. Emotionally we have been fans of it. In trade and commerce, we have primarily functioned as consumers and talent in that world. Yet, after all of this intimate involvement we have yet to dominate it, as investors and owners of companies that specialize in it. Is greater ownership of sports and entertainment companies the key to the elevation of the economic condition of Blacks in America?

No, but it matters.

For instance, Minister Farrakhan has likened our talent to that of the natural resource wealth of other nations and has provided guidance and encouragement for us to evolve from consumers and producers and into controlling distribution in those fields. We have not heeded his advice. We have applauded his insights and wisdom and done little to move on his words, despite the fact that a critical mass of Black and Muslim professionals have served in and know every single aspect of the entertainment industry. If these professionals would work collectively, under Minister Farrakhan's guidance, the dynamics of sports and entertainment would change, forever.

A key factor in the success of such an effort would be everyone involved going to war with envy and negative jealousy.

The business of sports and entertainment factors into our rise but the greatest emphasis in the economic aspects of the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is devoted to three areas: savings; farming; and entrepreneurial development. One objective of this tripod is to suffice the basic needs and wants of our people and build a foundation for international trade and commerce.

In my study of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews I became aware of the book, ‘The Agricultural Life Of The Jews In Babylonia,' here is an excerpt which struck me:

“But even the Rabbis who favoured trade as an easier means of making a livelihood agreed that it was essential for every man to be the owner of at least some land. The same R. Eleazar who preferred business to agriculture maintained that any one who did not possess real estate was not worthy of the name of man. Land too was, in those days, the safest form of investment, as it could not be stolen, lost, burned, or destroyed, and though it would sometimes happen that people were despoiled of their land, they could subsequently reclaim it in the Persian courts. It is easy, therefore, to understand the advice of R. Isaac (a Palestinian who emigrated to Babylonia (3^rd and 4^th cent.), that a man should divide his possessions into three parts: one-third should be made up of real estate, another third should be invested in business, and the rest should be kept in cash. The people of Mehuza, we learn, would save their surplus money in their celebrated money-bags, and, when opportunity offered, invest it in real estate.”

At this time and well before it, ‘cash' did not mean paper or fiat currency. It often represented metals like silver which maintain wealth over time. History has shown gold to be the best tore of wealth over time.

Keeping money as ‘cash' at a time of inflation is not wise. Usually we are told that keeping certificates of deposit (CDs) give the best return on cash savings. But here is what the Wall Street Journal reported on May 23rd:

“The yield investors earn on the highest-paying certificates of deposit is now lower than the rate of inflation, meaning those investors are losing money, according to research from Market Rates Insight.

Annualized yields on five-year, callable certificates of deposit, or CDs, hit 2.4% in April, while the annual inflation rate hit 3.16%, producing a negative yield of 0.76, said MRI.

“That money locked in a bank is losing more buying power than the interest rate you are getting on it, because the same money is buying less goods and services,” said Dan Geller, executive vice president at MRI, in an interview.

Ask a financial adviser what $95,000 invested in the best CD rates available would have earned you since 2005 as compared to that same amount held in gold or silver coins.

In the book The Jewish Phenomenon, Steven Silbiger writes, “From a purely economic standpoint, the lack of interest in being professional athletes has been a wise decision for the Jewish people. The probability of becoming one of America's five thousand highly paid professional athletes, two-thousandths of 1 percent (.002 percent) of the population, is pretty small. Take the expected monetary (the payoff multiplied by the probability of success) and you get a very small prize.”

Football great Ray Lewis's statement that if there were no NFL games this year, crime would rise, was seized upon by the media. He's right and wrong. Consider this from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in Message To The Black Man, “America, more than any other country, offers our people delinquency, murder, theft and other forms of wicked and immoral crimes. This is due to this country's display of filthy temptations in this world of sport and play.”

Now think over this in The Wall Street Journal regarding a recent survey of college students at the University of Illinois, Chicago, “…the most striking finding had to do with race: 37.2% of black students were at least occasional Twitter users, compared with 20.8% of white students and 10.1% of Hispanics. Previous studies have also found high Twitter adoption rates among African-Americans. The survey tied those rates to a disproportionately high interest in celebrity and entertainment news—one of the key reasons people turn to Twitter, the survey says.”

Let's study Minister Farrakhan's wisdom regarding what ‘fun' and ‘good conversation' really is, discussed in the book Closing The Gap.

(Cedric Muhammad is the author of ‘The Entrepreneurial Secret' book series [http://www.theesecret.com/]. He does not provide investment advice but has a referral relationship with SDL Numismatic Properties Inc. - a specialist in rare coin investments. To enjoy a discount, please visit: http://www.usgoldcoins.com/ or call 1-800-878-2646 and utilize code ‘cmcap.')