Category: money

14 March 2002

Our President and Congress make a big noise about corporations going belly-up and the “scandal” of insider trading, so they propose “tough new regulations” to restore investor confidence in the stock market. I’m a little confused. Aren’t crimes like fraud, theft, extortion, and perjury already illegal? We don’t need new laws to “restore confidence.” Artificial reporting requirements are part of the reason that many businesses are having a rough time of it already.

Now, I do not intend to diminish the very real trauma for shareholders, pensioners, and employees who are getting hurt in the fallout from the failures of Enron® and WorldCom®, but the sad fact is that some enterprises don’t cut it, and some people don’t do well in the market. It’s tragic, but the only alternatives to the free market are Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Communist China, or Soviet Russia. So when Republicans® and Democrats® vow to fix the system, to protect the consumer, to cushion the investor, and to save capitalism from itself, I have to say, “Hold on to your wallets, folks, you’re about to get gored.”

The fact is, bankruptcy isn’t all bad news. It isn’t fun, but sometimes it’s the best thing in the long run. When a company goes under, its material assets don’t evaporate, and the talents and experiences of its many employees don’t disappear. The market will reallocate them to other tasks. It is far better for the economy for a failure like Enron to fade into history, than for “successes” like Amtrak and the US Post Office to continue sucking up taxpayer subsidies and posting record losses quarter after quarter. When a capitalist makes a bad decision, the market mercilessly shuts him down. When a government agency makes a bad decision and loses record amounts of money inflicting record amounts of damage, the Congress increases its budget.

If private citizens ran an operation like the Social Security Pyramid Swindle, they’d be in prison. It’s long past time to retire that fraud. Liability to three generations of Social Security and Medicare victims can arguably be considered to be a part of the Federal Debt, and settlements based on divestiture of Federal Assets may provide us with the leverage we need to retire these schemes.

I want every victim of the Social Security Scam to get back every dime that was taken plus interest. How much interest is hard to say, but we can have that argument later. Victims who trusted the system and are now wholly dependent on it should get the help they need. The help they NEED. Yes, I propose means testing. The Congress must change the statute so that those retirees who are able to care for themselves will not get any more than a just return on what was taken.

Most important of all, however, is to let every working American stay out of it altogether. Let them save the money if they wish, or put it into their coin collections, or bury it in the back yard. Better still, let them invest it in their own retirement, and let them earn a market return, rather than the anemic performance of the Social Security “Trust Fund.”

Savvy politicos have named Social Security the “Third Rail of American Politics.” It is a reference to electric subway trains that draw their power from the charged third rail. You touch it and you die. It’s a very colorful expression, and it may well have some merit as a warning to those who would court the free lunch vote, but a candidate who refuses to acknowledge the inevitable collapse of the system doesn’t deserve your respect or your vote. We have nothing to lose by retiring Social Security except constantly rising taxes and constantly diminished prospects for a survivable retirement.

Pessimists will have you believe there is no hope, ever, of changing the system, and since they haven’t the means to make a difference, they have relieved themselves of the responsibility to make the effort. I’m not surrendering to their future, and I hope you won’t either. We can make a difference, every day, with every vote, with every purchase, with every word and gesture and action. We are making the future every day. It’s up to each of us.

update 180311: Very little has changed on this front except the public notoriety of Martha Stewart’s time in stir, providing critics of the Iraqi invasion the handy slogan, “Martha lied, but no one died.” It is sad, stupid, and ridiculous all at once. Ms Stewart wasn’t even convicted of the outrageously contrived non-crime of “insider trading” but of simply stymieing the FBI’s pointless investigation.
update 210325: Considering the evil that the FBI commits, Martha deserves a full pardon. Maybe even a medal. Lying to the fuzz wastes their time and obstructs their investigations. I wouldn’t recommend it, because they are heavily armed, highly vengeful, and demonstrably homicidal. But I still salute courage.

These comments are sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead).  For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or 
Four United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars”
in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates,
c/o Gene Greigh // 401 Rio Concho Drive, #105;  San Angelo, Texas;  76903

6 March 1998 — approximated & paraphrased

Patient with a brokered account: “Time to settle up.”
Receptionist: “Well, looks like we’ll send a bill to your insurance company for a hundred and twenty dollars, but we’ll need your co-pay of twenty dollars, please. You can mail it in, if you like.”
P w/ aba: “Thanks! Have a great day!”
Receptionist: “Thank you, hon!  Next please.”

Patient without a brokered account: “Time to settle up.”
Receptionist: “Uh… you don’t have any insurance.”
P w/o aba: “That’s correct.”
Receptionist: “That’ll be three hundred dollars. Right fucking now!”

update 210108: Mrs Axis once explained this to me. Insurance companies deal in large numbers, and can therefore negotiate lower rates because they represent a bloc of reliable payers, whereas I am an unknown quantity, and they’re not sure they can get even a fraction out of me. But they didn’t know me, did they? So they couldn’t know in advance that for EVERY time I ever walked myself into a doctor’s or dentist’s or other skilled contractor’s office, and incurred a debt, they ALWAYS got EVERY DiME! Which makes me considerably more reliable than every bookie who ever went belly up and left thousands bereft.

The images above are reproduced for purposes of analysis and scholarship.  Their use here constitutes free advertisement for their creators at the considerable expense of Piracy Press & Greigh Area Associates. Stories are selected with the greatest of discrimination, but even numbered issues of Daring Love are specifically edited with the prurient interests of atavistic fanboys in mind.  
Reader discretion is advised.

2 March 2019

Leftie hysterics assured us that if President Trump were to install Betsy deVos as Secretary of Education that she would destroy public education in America. If only. Two years in and the nightmare of organized child abuse (a.k.a. “public education”) continues to terrorize and warp the minds of the helpless. Leftists can’t seem to keep their promises.

But let’s give Mrs deVos some credit. Her new educational tax credit plan would allow those of us who are presently sickened by our involuntary support for tyranny, murder, and graft to divert some of our stolen money from President Bushbama’s friends at Halliburton and Solyndra to help out Jean and the Kids at the Freedom School.

Let the shrieking commence.

update 210223: It’s bad enough when leftists break their promises (about Betsy’s ending F’eral interference in education, for example). It’s even worse when they keep them. President Select Harris and Former Vice President Biden seem intent on keeping theirs, and so far have faithfully squandered endless (arguably already useless) Senator-hours and destroyed thousands of (otherwise rewarding) jobs.

21 July 2018

How very gauche of our uncouth President to be “rapping” the Olympian minds of our exalted “Federal Reserve” as they pore over their auguries and divine the holiest and purest of interest rates for a grateful nation.

Backward rubes like Mr Trump might believe that in a primitive commodity based free market economy natural interest rates would be based on the perceived availability of surplus resources. In Our Enlightened Democracy we’ve learned from the great Soviet Pioneers that central planning, top down, one size fits all dicta are always superior to the chaotic caprice of capitalism and its mysterious invisible hands. All right (and wishful) thinking citizens understand that only the wizards of the Fe’ral Reserve have the moral clarity and detached objectivity to proclaim that most revered of rates. (Viva Vigorish!)

Mr Trump clearly fails to recall the Constitutional Convention of 1913 that repealed the Tenth Amendment (which theretofore had authorized State resistance to Fe’ral encroachment — really a dead letter anyway since Mr Lincoln’s invasion of the Sovereign South) and rescinded Article 1, Section 10’s prohibitions of the emission of Bills of Credit and of the States’ bar on making any Thing other than gold or silver Coin a Payment of Debts.

Silly President.  Constitutions are for tricks.

These comments are sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead).  For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or Four United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates, c/o Gene Greigh //  401 Rio Concho Drive, #105;  San Angelo, Texas;  76903

20 November 2020

One of the earliest productions of the U.S.Mint, the “Chain Cent” would set you back several pretty pennies if you wanted to score one for yourself.  It enjoyed a relatively brief tenure among US coinage, less than a year, particularly as compared to our present Lincoln Cent’s century of endurance. 

Legend has it that many objected to the chain because it evokes chattel slavery.  That’s a plausible argument, but I doubt it was the prime cause.  While slavery was thought to be immoral and repugnant by many in the Eighteenth Century, such folk were in fact a minority, and often considered to be unfit for polite society.  Slavery was still the living heritage of history, sanctioned by faith and tradition and the natural human desire to not want to be seen as rocking the boat. 

Another obvious evocation of chains is political bondage, and many found that antithetical to still recent revolutionary and secessionist sentiments.  Whatever the whole truth may be, now obscured by centuries, the design never saw another year. 

And that was fitting.

The chain, intended to represent “indivisibility,” was never supported by the literal confederate language of the Constitution, and is, in fact, undermined by the Tenth Amendment (and by ratification language from various State legislatures). It certainly is a cool specimen, but as a matter of policy for the official mint of what Mr Lincoln USED TO call The Grand Confederacy, the chain had to go.

31 March 2002

Federal, state, and local taxes, combined with our efforts to comply with them or to avoid them account for the wasting of fully half of our productive capacity. To release our full creative potential we must lift the crushing burden of the state from the engine of prosperity. A Libertarian Congress will eliminate the federal income tax. Present Federal claims of real property are more than enough to buy our way out of what may well be an awkward transition as the Federal Welfare State is dismantled and the Federal Debt is resolved. Some Libertarians make the argument, and it is not without merit, that the Federal Government had no legitimate claim to the vast West that it administers (or mismanages), and that these lands are properly already the property of the people or the states. However, I think the issue of Federal assets is one worth exploring, and may well provide us with the means to retire the Federal debt without the prospect of default, dislocation, or widespread social violence. When the jig is up, and people see that not only is the emperor naked, but his promised feast has already been eaten by previous congresses, I fear that many disaffected people will respond with violence rather than forbearance.

Republicans talk a fair free-trade position, but when it comes down to it, they’re all too happy to raise tariffs to protect their contributors. Welfare for the wealthy is just as destructive of the free market as withholding income taxes from workers’ paychecks. Democrats talk a great deal about compassion, but they’re always ready to raise taxes to support their pet lobbyists. Millions of families are supported by two wage-earners. One works to pay the mortgage, buy the groceries, and put braces on the children’s teeth. The other works to pay Uncle Ben and Uncle Sam. America doesn’t need more “free” goodies from the federal trough. We certainly don’t need subsidized child-care. We need real tax cuts so that Ward can stay home and take care of Wally and the Beaver while June goes to the office. Or vice versa.

update 180304: It would be remiss not to mention that additional peoples‘ property claims (both in the islands, and throughout the States) continue to manifest. The Lakota Republic, for example, and their Silver Bank, are securing their local and native interests against an uncertain future, while elsewhere other secessionist movements, from Cascadia to The Coral Republic, plan for their post-united States.
“Uncle Ben” is Benjamin Cayatano, Governor of the State of Hawaii in 2002, and the hero of creepy old men throughout the islands when he vetoed the legislatures’ raising the legal age of consent from fourteen to sixteen. Said heroism was thwarted when the legislature overrode his veto with their super-majority. The general infantilization of Western Civilization continues today as talk is bandied about over raising the minimum age to purchase certain scary looking guns to twenty-one years.
Aaaaand El Donaldo continues to demonstrate his fealty to mercantilist mythology. Republicans, meanwhile, cling to their traditional bad economics and base social appeal. Fremont’s Folly may have come full circle. New tariffs and nativist retrenchment echo the Proto-Republican Know-Nothings of the Nineteenth Century.
At this point, powdered Whigs wouldn’t surprise me.

These comments are sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead).  For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or Four United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates, c/o Gene Greigh //  401 Rio Concho Drive, #105;  San Angelo, Texas;  76903

25 February 2020

It is not gaining popularity just because innumerate and illiterate cashiers seem to be de rigueur.  (“Math is hard!”  “Reading is boring!”)  Well, that IS the reason that pictograms cover many of the registers at the QuikkStopp-by-the-Interstate™ and McGreaseTrapp’s™ these days, but not so much the push to eliminate financial freedom or flexibility. 

No, the appeal of cashlessness goes much deeper than that.  Soviet Stukaschi and Nazi Capo would likely appreciate our cashless trend.  By restricting payment to NSA-approved tracking devices (“RFID” &c) it becomes much easier for the Occupation to follow us, watch us, and control us.  By restricting liquid assets to F’eral Reserve Digits instead of grams of silver or liters of gasoline, it becomes much easier for organized criminals to rob us of our resources through inflationary excess, or simply to drain the digits from our accounts at their discretion.  In a cashless world, tax “cheating” would all but disappear.  (And of course, by “cheating” taxes I mean, like “cheating” death, i.e., preserving that which no one had the right to take.)

These comments are sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead).  For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or Four United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates, c/o Gene Greigh // 401 Rio Concho Drive, #105; San Angelo, Texas; 76903

25 August 2019

“Is it OK (sic) for the boss to make employees mix business with politics?”

In spite of threats of reprisal (in the form of boycott. divestiture, or sanction perhaps?) from established terror groups like GrabYourWallet® et al, employers are sticking to their guns. They’ll continue to kiss up to politicians by offering venues filled with enthusiastic PAID audiences. Responsible employees will continue to suck it up and accept the “easy” money, predicated only on their civil presence.

It is a comfort to learn that “legal experts” agree that employers have a right to use their resources as they wish, but in the ethical argument such learned opinions are irrelevant.

It’s very simple:
If you work at McGreasetrap’s® ya gotta wear the paper hat or ya gotta hit the door.
If you play for the Queen City Looters’n’Pillagers® and the coach says you stand for the national anthem, you stand or you walk.
If you take the boss’ money you do the boss’ bidding.
How complicated is that?

24 June 2019

In his paeans to price-fixing and central planning, Fed fan Justin Lahart (Wall Street Journal weekend edition 6/22-23) glosses over the Federal Reserve’s many failures, exaggerates the extent of alleged 19th Century panics, and ignores the F’eral Reserve System’s greatest crimes.

In addition to facilitating intervention in World War One, thereby spawning both Nazi and Soviet horrors, it has inexorably gouged out about 98% of the value of the US Dollar. Prior to its steady loss of value since 1913 the American Dollar gained purchasing power throughout the late 19th Century, as an unrestrained free market unleashed unprecedented improvements in manufacture, transportation, and hygiene.

The full extent of these banksters’ larceny has been largely disguised by continuing gains in productivity. Nevertheless, hapless savers are faced with the prospect of watching their life’s work evaporate, or be thrust into a speculative arena where many do not belong, or put their trust in a “certified financial planner.”

Nah… Give me guns, gold, and garden tools.