THIS year, wherever you are located on earth, the best investment that you can have is definitely education. Without education, you will never know the best investment practices which will lead to the success of one’s business. So whether you’re in France or in Japan, education is really needed. And it is not just in the field of business that education is needed. Even in the field of international politics and negotiation and that includes inter-country trade negotiations as well, education is needed so your country’s side will not be at a disadvantageous position. You must discern on whether the position of the other country – whether economic or political – will ultimately be advantageous for your country but at the same time not harmful to the other country.

Thus, education must start from being toddlers whether you’re American or Chinese. It must start from the parents or guardians. For instance, there’s one 13-month-old American boy that I know who is a known wizard because he can already read monosyllabic English words. The boy is now five years old and he doesn’t look like a nerd, he looks just like the average American kid. In fact, the boy has been a guest in Ellen DeGeneres’s talk show. I love how his parents raised the child. I certainly hope all parents in the United States, Spain and the rest of the world will raise their children that well.

But education of a child can certainly not be advanced if their government does not subsidize or take care of education. Thus, President Bush in 2002 signed a landmark act aptly called the No Child Left Behind Act. The law is intended for children who live in trailer parks, in the ghettos, in the poor Hispanic and New Orleans neighborhoods – those who don’t have access to quality education. And it is not just the minorities such as the African American kids who are poor in mental state. There are also Caucasian kids who perfectly know the English twang in their locality but with crooked grammar. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is the answer to that.

With the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein in 2003, the No Child Left Behind Act has been modified to lure fresh and unemployed college graduates to enlist in the military and let all their college student loans be forgiven completely. As everybody knows, it is a headache to every college graduate in the United States whose tertiary education is financed by student loans because he or she will have the burden to pay the loan for 30 long years. Even though these loans have minimal interest, it is still an obligation that simply doesn’t fade in time. So with the introduction of this new policy by the United States government, indebted in what seems to be forever with your college loans will be a thing of the past but only if you are awarded a tour of duty to high-risk places such as Afghanistan or Iraq.