Show me the money. The success (and very existence) of the morg does not depend on the number of members they claim. The real indicator is the amount of tithing they can rake in. If that number goes down, they are losing. If it goes up, they are winning. This is one reason they keep their finances secret. Although they make billions every year, my guess is that number is slowly decreasing, which is something the brethren would never reveal publicly.

It's interesting to speculate on the membership numbers, but the only number that counts is on their bank statement.

They make over $800M in INTEREST on the Perpetual Education Fund, with zero risk to the principal (accd to Daymon Smith's book). That is one very small portion of the pie, and iirc it is a non-profit org so it pays little or no taxes. Additionally most of the money the fund lends out goes to pay tuition at church-owned schools, so even if the borrower defaults on the loan the money never really left their control anyhow.

They will not fail for lack of funds any time soon. They will still be around during my great-great-grandchildren's lifetime.

I hear you petrouchka. I think we can all agree that they do things right in a financial sense. Mandatory fees for salvation (known as tithing) and their various business ventures will keep them going for a long time. Which is exactly my point. Without money this church is nothing more than an acted-out comic book.

If funds decrease too much, all they have to do is receive another revelation that now the Lord wants 20% from everybody remaining.

Think of all the blessings! Now thr doors of heaven will open, not just the windows.

All indications point to LDS Inc being in serious financial difficulties.

Any information leaked about finances would have been planted by LDS Inc. none are verifiable.

However much money is figured to be income, whether income or proceeds from investment, is not of importance. The only thing that is important is the outflow.

Of this outflow, LDS Inc is entirely dependent on the idea that people that have taken from the company, whether outright embezzlement or insider contracts, have gotten their fill and simply are no longer greedy. Nor have new ones come along.

People spend way too much time looking at LDS managers homes and lifestyles. This is a diversion, and probably not by chance. While doing so, they are ignoring the pallets of cash being transferred.

These people are dirty to the core.

Transferred from where to where? Also what are the indicators of serious financial difficulty?

Unindoctrinated Wrote:
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> Transferred from where to where? Also what are the
> indicators of serious financial difficulty?

We are seeing things that would indicate financial difficulties for similar sized corporations.

Layoffs and forced retirements at the COB. The shutdown/spinoff of Beneficial Life. Missionaries being used at call centers. senior missionaries being recruited for formerly paid professional church positions. Every member a janitor extended to temples too. The lowering of the missionary age, particularly when recruiting from the outside is at an all time low.

As far as money being transferred look at the recent large real estate deals such as the mall, the Philly project, and the large Florida land purchase. We know nothing about the structuring of these deals. My guess is some large organizations needed a lot of money laundered. LDS inc needs to keep up appearances and transfer money to the people they want to get it. My guess is that the other organizations fronted all monies, and LDS Inc fronted their name and reputation.

The morg is the wealthiest US church, but it does nothing for the members and the community compared to mainstream religions. It has the largest corporate structure and when that starts to decrease then you know the,morg is in financial trouble.

From the indepth Businessweek report two years ago about LD$ Inc.'s corporate empire:

"As a religious organization, the LDS Church enjoys several tax advantages. Like other churches, it is often exempt from paying taxes on the real estate properties it leases out, even to commercial entities, says tax lawyer David Miller, who is not Mormon. The church also doesn’t pay taxes on donated funds and holdings. Mitt Romney and others at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded in 1984, gave the Mormon Church millions’ worth of stock holdings obtained through Bain deals, according to Reuters. Between 1997 and 2009, these included $2 million in Burger King (BKW) and $1 million in Domino’s Pizza (DPZ) shares. Under U.S. law, churches can legally turn around and sell donated stock without paying capital-gains taxes, a clear advantage for both donor and receiver. The church also makes money through various investment vehicles, including a trust company and an investment fund called Ensign Peak Advisors, which employs managers who specialize in international equities, cash management, fixed income, quantitative investment, and emerging markets, according to profiles on LinkedIn (LNKD). Public information on Ensign Peak [Advisors] is sparse. In 2006 one of the fund’s vice presidents, Laurence R. Stay, told the Mormon-run Deseret News, 'As we trade securities, all of the trading happens essentially with a handshake.... There’s lots of protections around it, but billions of dollars change hands every day just based on the ethics of the group—that people know that they can trust each other.'” (Ref. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money#p2 )

For years, Ensign Peak Advisors has traded in not only stocks and bonds, but also credit derivatives and credit default swaps. The massive boom U.S. subprime credit market of 1998 to 2007, which led to the multi-trillion-dollar bust that began seven years ago, involved of over-the-counter derivatives, especially credit default swaps.

Super-high-speed computerized trading takes advantage of movement in the price of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and much more. Mathematical algorithms take human emotion out of the equation. You can be d*mn sure that the multi-billion-dollar LD$ Cult has been exploiting every technological advantage that maximizes the amount of money it rakes in from financial trades.