Category: money

Posted on

Fiat Lucre!

26 May 2019

“Let there be cash!”

It’s very difficult to dredge up any sympathy for American snivelers who wail about “foreign currency manipulation” or “currenc[ies] that [are] artificially weak.” To make sympathy even harder, these pampered plutocrats propose to respond to foreign central banks aping the Federal Reserve’s schtick (and industrious foreign entrepreneurs offering us great deals) by siccing their pet legislators onto the American consumer with additional tariffs.

For a century the F’eral Reserve has been the king of currency manipulation, and as the century wore on other central banks realized that they too could foist such offenses onto their captive markets. Who do they think they are? Americans?

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

Posted on

* * * * * * advertisement * * * * * *

cover illustration by Frank Frazetta.  Tarzan created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Used without permission.  Piracy Press is a non-profit enterprise dedicated to the preservation and distribution of great art and ripping good yarns.

Digital Damage by Lethargy Lad.  Price per issue:  Ten Centigrams Gold.

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.

Posted on

SO (please don’t) SUE ME

Assuming there are any profits, of course. So far Piracy Press consists of me (Lethargy Lad, Editing Emir and Digital Doofus), my scanner/printer, Bill Gates’ software, and the United States Post Office. What I print is mostly given to my friends who haven’t complained enough for me to stop yet. Some have seen fit to subsidize my efforts, but any “profits” are still strictly imaginary.

Besides…

Piracy Press is a non-profit enterprise dedicated to the preservation and distribution of great art and ripping good yarns. We are strictly small time, and if you’re so self-absorbed as to take this to trial it can be certain that you MAY NOT HAVE (that would be both incidental and irrelevant) but you WOULD BE the biggest dick in the court.

Still, I’m eager for ya’ll to make contact, and please do. I’m too lazy to look all of ya up, and frankly a little embarrassed by the smallness of my “enterprise.” Still, I fancy that you’ll like what I’ve done and that maybe we actually can see some sort of profit (a little more generous to me than a hundred per cent for you, I hope), and, as always, there seems to be no limit to the amount of praise that my ego can soak up.
190514

Posted on

Austrian Dominance?

7 October 2019

It was with no small measure of surprise that I read (Wall Street Journal October 5&6 edition: “Team Liberty”) that, “by the end of the 20th century, the ideas of the Austrian School would [come to] dominate global economic policies.”

“Dominate?” If I’d read “influence” I probably would not have blinked. The Austrian School’s influence has grown and ebbed over the generations, but I’ve yet to witness its DOMINATION.

Perhaps one could educate this (apparently) poor scholar. I do remember Bubba’s disingenuous claim that “the era of Big government [was] over.” Other than that, what else might I have missed? What globally dominating institution (transnational corporation OR government) has uniformly renounced price controls, tariffs, income and capital gains taxation, prohibition, prior restraint, central banking, or fiat currency?

To the contrary, that litany of crimes is actually contemporaneous orthodoxy.

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

Posted on

* * * * * * advertisement * * * * * *

cover illustration by Vic Lockman.  Used without permission.  Piracy Press is a non-profit enterprise dedicated to the preservation and distribution of great art and ripping good yarns

Digital Damage by Lethargy Lad.  Price per issue:  Ten Centigrams Gold.

Posted on

Fiat Free Fall

17 September 2018

As Turks and Russians labor to bolster their respective currencies, to arrest their deterioration with respect to America’s F’eral Reserve “Dollar” I am reminded of sky-diver footage. They are all dropping, but from the perspective of F’eRD, as Lira and Ruble trim their parachutes to slow their descent it looks to the camera like they might be coming back up. It’s just an illusion.

As long as the world’s faith-based fiat currencies (“Fiat lucre!”) are backed by political integrity rather than such “obsolete relic[s]” as silver or gold, their value will continue to descend. Unlike falling bodies, however, their approach to zero is more asymptotic, so it feels smoother and less dangerous for now, but the end of the ride can be just as catastrophic.

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;  San Angelo, Texas;  76903

Posted on

Smart phone and mine safety

15 September 2018

Owners of Apple and Samsung “smart phones” can take pride in their contributions to the betterment of Congolese cobalt miners. The material properties of cobalt apparently make it a suitable heat sink for the energetic lithium batteries that many are now carrying. From our comfortable “First World” perspective of abundance, security, and opportunity we are readily appalled by the primitive work conditions and risks involved and we are quick to pity the struggling laborers in cobalt rich Kolwezi.

The (arguably) “well-meaning” left will campaign loudly and passionately for “fair trade,” “ethical sourcing,” and “environmental responsibility,” but they neglect their history. Every successful free market society is descended from earlier ages when things got cold and hungry a lot. Through hard arduous often dangerous work, free exchange, and capital accumulation, each society eventually achieved a level of affluence that allowed it to spend more on safety, leisure, health, and education.

Until then, people are going to go into the mines, and maybe even sell their safety equipment if they can get a good price for it. It often means the difference between eating or not. Clumsy attempts to “regulate” international markets, impose minimum wages, or otherwise restrict free association and free trade condemns millions to short and painful lives of penury and privation.

“Greedy capitalists” did not create child labor.
Hunger created child labor.
“Greedy capitalists” cure hunger.

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

Posted on

We Are Doomed

22 November 2010 (Daily Paul)

The Federal Reserve Account Unit of Debt (aka the Federal Reserve Note fiat “dollar”) will tank. Let me repeat that. It WILL tank. The only question is: How fast, how catastrophically, and how much will it hurt?

If it continues its slow slide into oblivion, we will all be hurt, a little at a time, though the least able to afford it will be hurt the most. That’s what’s been happening for decades. In the history of fiat currencies, paper money ALWAYS disintegrates. If the decline accelerates (think Weimar Republic), the residue could be catastrophic, and tyranny will rush in through the window of opportunity.

If Dr Paul and the rest of the hard money advocates get our way, we will put the brakes on the Federal Reserve scam, restabilize the currency, and then we will be facing a mild to severe recession as misspent resources are reallocated into more rational and productive enterprises. Little people will get hurt while the dinosaurs thrash about in their death throes.

If we do nothing, then we face even greater danger (think of the immediate heirs to the Weimar Republic.)

That’s our challenge. We must try to sell immediate and certain economic discomfort as the only means to avoid greater and inevitable trauma. Promoting certain discomfort is an almost impossible political sell, but the only alternative to imminent discomfort is disaster, and the likeliest alternative to political correction is an orgy of violence not seen on this continent since the War Against the States.

I try to be optimistic and advocate for political salvation, but I’m also stocking up on gold, silver, canned goods, clean water, high test hootch, toilet paper, and ammunition.

Posted on

Free Bernard!

General Cashier,
The Confederate Mint
Lebanon, Ohio; 45036
Greater Cincinnatistan

Jean Schmidt, MC
District of Columbia

Mrs Schmidt,

To begin, I copy the e-mail that I sent to Mr Thomas Ascik, Assistant US Attorney in Statesville, North Carolina:

Attn Thomas Ascik:

I hereby certify that I am the bearer of Liberty Dollar warehouse receipts and an interested party in any forfeiture action regarding my property. I demand the return of my property or its fair market value in a timely manner and to be informed with sufficient time to reply to any and all actions until my property is returned. In addition to the ability to redeem my warehouse receipts as originally agreed, I am also out the six hundred Federal Reserve Dollars that I sent to Liberty Dollar in November of 2007, just as your accomplices were seizing our property in violation of the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments, as well as of decency, courtesy, and human conscience.

At this point I would very much prefer the twenty five ounces of silver for which I paid, plus the hundred ounces of copper, though I suppose at this point, since you people have me both out-gunned and out-numbered, I may well have to settle for far less than justice.

I can be contacted by return e-mail, or by surface mail or by telephone.  I am eager for your response, and I remain, in spite of the evidence, relentlessly optimistic.

While I indeed tend toward optimism in my life, I am not unaware of the great indifference to injustice that often permeates our culture and our governmental institutions. One such example is the egregious assault on Liberty Dollar and the ridiculous charge of “counterfeiting” against Bernard von NotHaus.

For the years that I was pleased to be associated with the Liberty Dollar organization I have never been given cause to complain until the FBI seized my property in November of 2007, nor have I received any complaints from vendors whose one ounce Ten and Twenty Liberty Dollar pieces have since appreciated to a current metallic wholesale content of thirty-seven (Incredible Shrinking) Federal Reserve “Dollars.”

I have appealed to President Obama, as a human being and as a student of the Constitution and as an advocate of social justice, to immediately pardon Bernard von NotHaus and to direct the Justice and Treasury Departments to return all impounded properties.

Of course, while the Congress may have no authority to pardon, they can nevertheless bring much to bear in the way of inquiry and subpoena power.

I look forward to a timely and just resolution to this assault on privacy, property, and freedom of expression.

I thank you for your attention to this matter, and I invite you to contact me at your convenience.

General Cashier

Cc: Senator Sherrod Brown
Senator Robert Portman
President Barack Obama
120112

update 180416: 97% discount in graphic was based on the price of silver in 2012. While Greigh Area Associates does traffic in silver coin, discounts are negotiable.