What’s more important than making money?

There is a time for making money and there is a time for giving money. Now is the time to reach into your heart and help your global neighbors.

As rumors of a death toll in Haiti that could stretch into the hundreds of thousands slowly become reality, we need to spend a moment or two wondering why we do what we do.

As investors, we risk our hard-earned money so we can obtain the freedom and enjoyment of spending that money how and when we want it.

We can buy a boat. We can buy a pile of gold. Or we could fulfill our human obligation of helping those in need.

Now, I’m not going to tell you to cut a massive check or ponder the notion of tithing. The mainstream media is doing a fine job of that.

I am writing you telling you to send whatever you can.

From what I am told, thousands of Haitians may succumb to this tragedy simply because of a lack of water. Imagine the impact you could have on a person’s life if you could help supply them with just a day’s worth of water.

The same amount of cash you’re planning on spending on dinner tomorrow night could help turn around the lives of dozens of people facing an unimaginable battle.

I am glad to report the corporate world is wasting no time doing what is right. So far, I have found reports Wal-Mart is donating $600,000 in cash, plus a $100,000 worth of meal packages. Lowes, UPS and Coca-Cola are each offering a million in cash and services to Haiti’s recovery effort.

Even down-and-out General Motors recognizes a charity case when it sees it. (It takes one to know one.) What’s left of the carmaker is donating $100,000.

Whether you donate or not, I urge you to not let this horrific situation erode into a disgusting partisan or religious battle. Thanks to Pat Robertson’s comments yesterday, it is already happening.

The fight that lies ahead for this battered nation’s people stretches beyond all of that. The radio and TV personalities making this a political matter, Rush Limbaugh included, are showing their utter selfishness.

When there are no lives hanging in the balance, we will have time for the bantering.

Today, however, there’s work to be done.

*** While I promise to never make a natural disaster a political tool, I would be derelict of my duties if I did not discuss the financial world and help you maximize the amount of cash you have available to donate.

There’s no debating one of the biggest drains on our cash each year are taxes. From sales tax to income tax to property tax, you can’t move in this country without paying for it.

With the Democrats boasting a super-majority, it is only going to get worse. Taxes are going to rise.

The most popular sport in Washington these days is picking on the nation’s big banks. In one breath we curse and penalize them for creating this financial fiasco, yet in the next we tell them to lend even more.

It must be painful to be a political punching bag.

The pain will only grow if Obama gets his way. He’s lobbying for a $90 billion tax on the nation’s fifty or so largest banks in an attempt to repay taxpayers for TARP losses.

If the measure goes through the way it is planned now, it will be the most idiotic and counterproductive tax yet.

Instead of taxing revenues or earnings, Washington wants to impose a 0.15% balance-sheet tax. In other words, it is a tax on growth.

Sure, it will raise billions of dollars for Geithner and his red-ink Treasury, but it will force banks to raise borrowing costs or curb lending. Either way, you and I are ultimately paying for it.

Jeb Hensarling, a Republican representative from Texas said it well. “How you are going to tax banks and expect them to lend more is frankly lunacy.”

Whether it is the smart way of raising more money or not does not appear to be a concern with Obama. With a Q1 deficit of $388.5 billion and an annual shortfall of $1.502 trillion staring him in the face, the president has got to do something to reduce the gap between revenues and expenditures.

If not, we all know what’s around the corner. A dollar crisis.

Now that the American citizenry is on the hook for $12.285 trillion dollars, our global lenders are sharpening their teeth just waiting for a chance to clamp down and take a bite out of our fiscal superiority.

“It has got to be done. It will be done some day. It may be done with enormous pain. Or it may be done more rationally,” Rudolph Penner, the former top dog at the Congressional Budget Office, said on the subject of minimizing the country’s deficit.

One thing is clear when it comes to this nation’s history of stopping credit-based calamities before they strike; we are horrible at it.

We missed our chance in the 1930s, we missed our chance in the ‘80s and we missed our chance once again in 2008.

Flat out, it is not politically strategic to raise taxes and/or cut spending. Unfortunately, if we are not willing to do it, Mother Economy will.

And she doesn’t use painkillers.

*** Finally, I mentioned the subject of international diversification yesterday. A British Columbia-based reader emailed me with a good question.

Why do so many investors ignore or overlook the natural resource investing potential in Canada?

The reader mentions that our northern neighbor’s natural resource base is larger than Australia’s and is also America’s chief source of foreign oil.

My answer lies in that last nugget of information. Without America’s unquenchable thirst for crude and other natural resources, Canada would be forced to sell its goodies overseas, in a much more competitive market.

There’s no doubt Canada is a good place to put a few investing dollars. The profit potential in a bull market is second to none. But pull America out of the equation, and Canada has some serious issues.

That’s why when it comes to seeking international diversification, Canada is a no go. Its correlation to the American economy is far too strong.

When China comes calling on Uncle Sam, Canada will have plenty of problems of its own.