5. Reading every word of every document that crosses your desk. We are living in age of information and it seems that much of it ends up on your desk each day demanding your attention. If you don't learn how to scan it quickly and either discard it or place it in your " for further study" pile you will end up overwhelmed and stressed.

6. Phone calls that are too long and too frequent. Some people just won't get off phone and let you get back to work. SOLUTION? Let people know that it is a bad time and then give them a better time to call when you can spare a FEW minutes. Before they call back get an egg timer and put it on your desk. As soon as their call comes in get egg timer going and then see if you are able to bring conversation to a conclusion within three minutes provided by timer.

The message is clear....TAKE BACK YOUR TIME.

Mike Moore Motivational Plus http:// www.motivationalplus.com

E-mail: mijmoor@yahoo.ca Author's URL: http://www.motivationalplus.com

The Investors

This is most intriguing group. Normative, law abiding, businessmen, who stumbled across methods to secure excessive yields on their capital and are looking to borrow their way into increasing it. By cleverly participating in bond tenders, by devising ingenious option strategies, or by arbitraging - yields of up to 300% can be collected in immature markets of transition without normally associated risks. This sub-species can be found mainly in Russia and in Balkans.

Its members often buy sovereign bonds and notes at discounts of up to 80% of their face value. Russian obligations could be had for less in August 1998 and Macedonian ones during Kosovo crisis. In cahoots with issuing country's central bank, they then convert obligations to local currency at par (=for 100% of their face value). The difference makes, needless to add, for an immediate and hefty profit, yet it is in (often worthless and vicissitudinal) local currency. The latter is then hurriedly disposed of (at a discount) and sold to multinationals with operations in country of issue, which are in need of local tender. This fast becomes an almost addictive avocation.

Intoxicated by this pecuniary nectar, fortunate, those privy to secret, try to raise more capital by hunting for financial instruments they can convert to cash in Western banks. A bank guarantee, a promissory note, a confirmed letter of credit, a note or a bond guaranteed by Central Bank - all will do as deposited collateral against which a credit line is established and cash is drawn. The cash is then invested in a new cycle of inebriation to yield fantastic profits.

It is easy to identify these "investors". They eagerly seek financial instruments from almost any local bank, no matter how suspect. They offer to pay for these coveted documents (bank guarantees, bankers' acceptances, letters of credit) either in cash or by lending to bank's clients and this within a month or more from date of their issuance. They agree to "cancel" locally issued financial instruments by offering a "counter-financial-instrument" (safe keeping receipt, contra-guarantee, counter promissory note, etc.). This "counter-instrument" is issued by very Prime World or European Bank in which locally issued financial instruments are deposited as collateral.

The Investors invariably confidently claim that financial instrument issued by local bank will never be presented or used (which is true) and that this is a risk free transaction (which is not entirely so). If they are forced to lend to bank's clients, they often ignore quality of credit takers, yields, maturities and other considerations which normally tend to interest lenders very much.

Whether a financial instrument cancelled by another is still valid, presentable and should be honoured by its issuer is still debated. In some cases it is clearly so. If something goes horribly (and rarely, admittedly) wrong with these transactions - local bank stands to suffer, too.

It all boils down to a terrible hunger, kind of thirst that can be quelled only by denominated liquidity of lucre. In post nuclear landscape of this part of world, a fantasy is shared by both predators and prey. Circling each other in marble temples, they switch their roles in dizzying progression. Tycoons and politicians, industrialists and bureaucrats all vie for attention of Mammon. The shifting coalitions of well groomed man in back stabbed suits, an hallucinatory carousel of avarice and guile. But every circus folds and every luna park is destined to shut down. The dying music, frozen accounts of deceived, bankrupt banks, Jurassic Park of skeletal industrial beasts - a muted testimony to a wild age of mutual assured destruction and self deceit. The future of Eastern and South Europe. The present of Russia, Albania and Yugoslavia.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

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