Welcome!

Creditor?  Debtor?  Written-Off American?

“Written Off – America and Americans” is a book-in-process started on April 26, 2010 that will comprise 12 chapters to be sourced almost entirely on the Internet through Social Media engines such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter…and innumerable email exchanges.

Some considerable effort by a world-wide following of people has been invested in developing and fashioning the subject matter.  Just exactly how has the Great Recession come about?  Who is to fault?  Where is there hope?  Would this evolve into just another “How To” book, or compete with books written by “brand name” economists?  What, exactly would be its contribution?  Would it further doom-and-gloom, or offer hope and support?

We cannot be definitive as yet, but a lot of great, human material is arriving.  First a trickle, presently a stream, and soon a river.  Social Media sources at LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook now number in the 1,000′s.

This past several several months of crowd-sourcing has brought us to where we are now.  It is now time to start delivering the chapters!

Completion date?  If we can get this Crowd Act together, we might actually publish somewhere in September/October.  A “fall harvest,” as it were.

At this point, we have completed our Twelfth week – Twelfth chapter –  “Is There Life After Debt?” which will prescribe various nostrums to bring us back to health and sanity.  Are you arisen?  Still among the walking dead?   We want to hear your story!

If this is the first time you have landed on this site, be sure to come back again and again as the chapters roll out.   As you come and go, leave a thought or two behind to help others.  We need you to stay and play because this site is not about “taking back” America as we once imagined it to be.  It is about re-inventing America.  It is about questioning the sanity – or insanity – of debt, whether owed by you or owed you by others.   It is about a system which is singularly designed to put us in debt and keep us in debt.  The barely-haves beholden to the really-haves.

Ergo, you owe it to yourself (pun intended) to better understand the economic dance in which you are engaged… a dance in which more than your toes can be stepped on.

None of us – U.S. or foreign – are untouched observers in the economic meltdown we are calling The Great Recession.  By sharing your story, and learning from the stories of others as to how we have arrived at this depressing financial condition, I predict you will better survive – and even thrive – in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

This is not a book about Doom and Gloom, it is a book about Hope and Help.

My purpose and role in authoring this book?  My 30-plus-year entrepreneurial career in finance, credit and collections has given me access to the inner workings of Corporate America and how they manage money.  I and teams I have put together have collected for them, and I have personally been collected on by them.

I know both sides of the story.  And, when you consider that this work will be the collected wisdom and experience of those who have “been there and been done to,” who better than all of us to write such a book?

So, it is your take on debt that interests me. 

Here’s the structure: people submitting materials to me both here and elsewhere (I am a big LinkedIn and Twitter fan – with a soon-to-be-launched Facebook page)  that are used either whole or in part will receive as compensation a free eBook of “Written Off – America and Americans.”

Contributors of particularly impactful material will receive a signed copy of the bound edition of the book (assuming it goes to publication) and liberal credit and attribution in articles and during radio/tv/Internet interviews.

You have an assignment if you stay and play – if not to contribute your story, wisdom and rants, then to take the experience and wisdom and others and improve your own life and bring back success stories.  I look forward to every thought sent my way…as will your fellow readers and travelers down this rocky highway.

Jerry Ashton (Twitter Link)

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