Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Are We Rich Yet?

I found an old newspaper clipping from 1999 about Suze Orman promoting her book The Courage To Be Rich at New York's Trinity Church, just one block from Wall Street. Orman promoted the power of mind over money, mixing positive thinking, some common sense get out of debt advice and a smattering of spirituality to make millions telling others how to get rich.
A year later a new self -help manual would top the NY Times Bestseller List, The Prayer of Jabez, prescribing one month of prayer to become successful. Soon you could buy "Prayer of Jabez" key chains, mugs, backpacks, Christmas ornaments, scented candles, mouse pads, and jewelry. The prayer certainly made its author Bruce Wilkinson rich.
That same year, George W. Bush would be elected/appointed president, mixing a more lethal brand of self-righteous spiritual-neocon snake oil. With a Born Again President and Christian Capitalists like Kenneth Copeland, Paul Crouch, Billy Joe Daugherty, Creflo DollarBenny Hinn, T.D. Jakes, Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, Rod Parsley, Peter Popoff, Pat Robertson,  Robert Tilton all preaching the Gospel of Prosperity to millions of free enterprising Americans, who would have thought that the US would be the epicenter of the current economic near collapse.

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