Maybe you’ve seen this e-mail that people are passing around. I’m posting it in its entirety just so you can make sure you have ALL the facts.

THIS IS NOT A “DON’T BUY GAS FOR ONE DAY” MESSAGE, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $1.30 PER GALLON.

This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this please.

Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the “don’t buy gas on a certain day” campaign that was going around last April or May! It’s worth your consideration.

I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by next summer and it might go higher! Want gasoline prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action.

The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to “hurt ourselves” by refusing to buy gas.

It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT,whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can Really Work. Please read on and join with us!

By now you’re probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.49 for regular unleaded in my town, Seattle , WA .

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace - not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.

The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can’t just stop buying gas.

But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here’s the idea: For the rest of this year, DON’T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL.

If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It’s really simple to do! Now, don’t wimp out on me at this point. Keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers.

If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it… THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all!

(If you don’t understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people. Well, let’s face it, you just aren’t a mathematician. But I am. So, trust me on this one.

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!

I’ll bet you didn’t think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference.

If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Keep it going

Notice how it must be “good” because it came from a “retired Coca-Cola executive” not, by the way, “a retired Enron executive” or “a former President of Bear Stearns”. I’m surprised they didn’t use a “retired Disney executive” in the e-mail.

And, yes, the evil HALLIBURTON must also be mentioned. Good cop (Coca-Cola) and bad cop (Halliburton.)

Once again, it is similar to the one day “boycott” of gas stations from last fall where people were told to just not buy gas on a certain day.

What a concept! “Punish” those evil oil companies on that day.

I know- I’m sarcastic- but I can’t help it.

All of these “boycotts” are silly. Everyone needs gas. And nothing the consumer does can change the price.

EXCEPT- maybe they can.

Gas demand HAS been dropping. Just yesterday, MasterCard reported a 6% drop from the same week a year ago in gasoline charges (people using their charge cards to fill up.) Maybe the high prices are changing consumer behavior? Maybe people actually ARE driving less?

Gasoline at $4.00 won’t be fun. We all drive or take transportation that uses gasoline. It’s going to hurt us all in the pocket book.

But let’s stop blaming the companies that are getting it right - and that includes ALL of the big oil companies. They’re doing their jobs in an era when they now have to drill 2 miles into the ocean floor to get the crude. It’s not easy and only recently did engineering advances make it feasible and possible.

Let’s salute the oil companies for actually keeping the prices LOW for the last decade.

Compared to our European or Australian counterparts, our gasoline is cheap. They pay at least 30% more a gallon than we do.

Yes, I’m a shareholder in several large oil companies (if you can’t beat them, join them.) But that’s not why I’m writing this post. After all, the oil companies will continue to make money with or without someone buying gasoline at Exxon gas stations versus Marathon gas stations.

Look at your own life and make changes.

Do you drive a Prius or some other hybrid car?

Have you sold your gas guzzling SUV?

Do you live close to your place of work?

Do you kids walk or take the bus to school?

Can you walk to the grocery store?

What alternative fuels are you using to save energy? Do you have solar power in your home?

There are many things consumers can be doing to cut back on oil and energy consumption.

Let’s start there. It’ll be much more effective than yet another e-mail “boycott” and outrage at Exxon.

The Forbes Richest People edition recently came out and it was the richest issue yet. Back in the 1980s, you only had to have a measley $275 million to make the list. Now, even a billion might not get you on the list.

There are 40 plus billionaires in the San Francisco Bay Area alone.

The bigger question becomes, what do all of these rich people do with their money?

When Warren Buffett announced he was giving away his billions to his charitable foundation, leaving “only” $5 million or so each to his adult children, many people were appalled. They believed he should have left more to his children. Much more.

After all, why else are you making all of that money if you’re not going to leave it to your kids?

It’s not like he’s leaving them with nothing. They will get several million.

But how much is enough?

How much do YOU need to live on?

The New York Times wrote about inherited wealth and 20-somethings who were giving it away in an article called “Easy Come, Easy Go for Idealistic Heirs.”

ANNE GLICKMAN, 34, inherited several million dollars in stock on her 18th birthday. She preferred not to think or talk about the money into her 20s because, she said, as a political activist, her wealth was a bit inconvenient.

“I felt like I was in hiding,” she said.

A dozen years later, the trust fund had grown to eight figures. “Here I was, an activist thinking about class and race, but I wasn’t really factoring in my own personal wealth,” she said. “I decided to give away a large number. It was scary, but I just had to do it.”

So far, Ms. Glickman said, she has given away $1.2 million, and she plans to give away more.

Her mother was not thrilled. “I was shocked,” Francie Glickman said. “I had never heard of such a thing. My response was, ‘That’s a lot of money!’ ”

Her stocks grew to $12 million. So the $1.2 million was about 10% of her total networth. If the principal is invested conservatively, she should have more than enough to live well. Or would she?

For Anne Glickman, the decision was not about trying to live an ascetic life. “I’m not an antimaterialist,” she said. “I don’t believe you shouldn’t have a nice TV. But people said, ‘What about your unborn children?’ And at the time I think I was sitting on $12 million. I mean, how much do you need to raise children?”

At a time when people are in competition to see who can get the latest Viking Stove first, when some “designer” flip-flops made of plastic can cost $100, when a cotton shirt from Armani can be $150, it seems that everyone is rich, rich, rich.

Does anyone in the major metropolitan areas know anyone who doesn’t have an iPod?

Interestingly, some of the 20-somethings seem to realize that not everyone grows up with parents who work on Wall Street.

Tyrone Boucher, 25, said he told his father he wanted to donate his six-figure trust fund to groups that work for racial equality. As part of his argument, he pointed to the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

His father, he said, responded: “ ‘Tyrone, we’re not really rich. There are people who have multiple homes and private jets.’

“And I’d say, ‘But the thing is, you’re talking about your friends who are in the top 1 percent, and we’re in the top 5 percent.’

“The point isn’t to dis my dad,” he added. “The point is, what’s enough?”

The financial advisors can’t seem to grasp that some want to give to charities. Charitable donations, it seems, should be the $1000 a plate donation to the breast cancer foundation annual dinner. Not helping those less fortunate in others ways.

“You have these young people gazing upon an event like Katrina, on the tide of human suffering, and they say, ‘I have a million dollars, how can I watch this?’ ” said Ron Gallen, a financial adviser on the Upper East Side whose clients include young heirs. “And the answer is, because you have to. You have to be able to watch these things and go on with your life, otherwise you’ll be broke.”

These young rich should take a cue from 76-year old Chuck Feeney. He made billions in operating duty free shops in airports. He’s trying to give it all away. From the New York Times:

Last year, the foundation Mr. Feeney created, the Atlantic Philanthropies, gave $458 million in grants around the world, more than any United States charity except two, the Ford and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations. Atlantic, and small predecessors also started by Mr. Feeney, have given $4 billion since 1982; the plan is to give away the remaining assets — now $4 billion, but growing every day — by 2017.

He kept $5 million for himself to pay for any needed medical care. His wife got $60 million in a divorce settlement years ago. His children got nothing- except what they may inherit from the ex-wife if she leaves anything to them.

“A lot of wealthy people, they don’t realize they have the alternatives of spending the money for good,” he said. “If they knew it gives so much satisfaction, I wouldn’t have to persuade them. The press says someone’s ‘one of the wealthiest persons in the world,’ but he hasn’t figured out how many grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwiches that comes to. How many can you eat?”

That’s the question.

How much money is enough?

I hope you have a safe and wonderful holiday this week.

And I meant Thanksgiving, not Black Friday.

But if you have any Black Friday reports from the front lines, please send them in (especially if you’re one of the crazy ones going to the mall at 2 am.)

And for those of you who won’t be leaving your homes on that day: did you know that there are whole websites devoted to bringing you the “best” of the Black Friday ads? But of course you knew that. How silly of me!

Black Friday website

And:

Black Friday Ads

Buyer beware (on these sites!). I have no idea if the “sales” listed are legitimate or not. Or if the sites are, for that matter.

Only in America: a whole cottage industry has developed simply off of the “black friday” name. You gotta love it.

Now: SHOP!

The San Jose Mercury News had a cover article last week on the “Google Effect” which discussed how a “soaring stock price creates a gusher of wealth that is spreading far and wide.”

Really?

The examples they give are Googlers buying fancy bikes (in order to ride to work) so the bike shops are benefiting. They are also apparently buying custom boats and imported foods so specialty grocers in Silicon Valley are apparently seeing a big uptick in business. Here is more:

The wealth spread far and wide as Googlers hired maids and nannies, accountants and financial planners. They bid up home prices in Silicon Valley’s most elite ZIP codes and splurged on $15,000 custom bikes and $650,000 boats.

But no one knew how big the Google gusher was - until now. A Mercury News analysis of company documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission provides a rough estimate of the wealth that erupted from the famous search engine, spreading throughout the Bay Area and far beyond.

From 2004 through 2006, the most recent data available, Google generated more than $19 billion as employees cashed in stock options, top management sold shares and businesses provided Google with everything from imported olive oil to information technology services.

There are about 13,000 Google employees now but only about 4,000 to 5,000 are actually in the San Francisco Bay Area. And, yes, while the stock is hitting new highs, how many of those workers are older employees that would have more valuable stock options? Probably not that many.

Too much emphasis is put on one company whose stock is doing really well. Is the media in Dallas talking about the “Exxon effect” (as the stock has doubled in the past few years?) Or in Chicago, where the Chicago Mercantile Exchange stock (CME) has gone from $41.00 at the IPO in December 2002 to $629 today? That is a far better return than Google (which has gone from $95 to $637).

Where are all the CME millionaires? (Many employees there had stock options as well.) You would think that their spending habits are spilling over into the Chicago economy as well. They are a smaller company, with about 1500 employees, but those are a lot of rich employees.

There is no doubt that a rising stock price and a company that is hiring thousands of new workers a year will “create” a lot of spillover wealth effect in a region. But there is too much obsession with these companies and the wealth they are creating. ChevronTexaco is also headquartered in the Bay Area. They own a large refinery right near the Bay. Their stock is also doing quite well. I would bet if you looked at their “wealth effect” it too would be quite large.

The “Google Effect” is what happens in the normal course of a great company growing and doing business. Nothing more.