[GJM] Announcement: American Monetary Institute conference

[W. Curtiss Priest]

[reader:  see "Fraud, Farce and Foreclosures" below]

Dear Steve,

Stephen Zarlenga is, at the least, a positive force.

Yes, those who work for the government are much too
comfortable.  A college friend retired at age 55 from
the GAO, wealthy and well pensioned.

Yes, few at MIT, etc., understand.  But, do read
Kindleberger, who, prematurely I sense, saw the plague
of cycles.

A solution?  Pay the proceeds of productivity gains back
to the workers.  (see "Binary Economics," "Social Credit")

So, a good role for government.  Do that transfer.

Regards,

Curtiss

Steve Consilvio wrote:
> 
> Dear financially-concerned,
> 
> Consider attending the 3rd annual AMI Monetary Reform Conference
> in Chicago at Roosevelt Unversity, Sept. 27-30:
> 
> http://www.monetary.org/2007conference.html
> 
> AMI, headed by Stephen Zarlenga, is a needed voice amidst
> the ignorance and confusion about money.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Curtiss
> Editor, CITS Capital & Debt Watch
> 
> Hi Curtiss,
> 
> From what I can tell, Stephen Zarlenga is also ignorant and confused
> about money.  He does, however, approach it with an open-mind and a
> critical eye that is lacking in too many corners.  Most people just
> want to accumulate wealth, not understand it.
> 
> What follows is a brief essay I wrote recently.  Getting it published
> is practically impossible, given what it says.  But I think you might
> agree that the biggest problem with money is the concept of money.
>  MIT, by the way, along with Harvard and Yale, are one the biggest and
> original sources of the problem in modern times.
> 
> There is a huge gap between compassion and virtue that needs to be
> addressed.  You are in the belly of the dragon.  :-)
> 
> peace,
> steve consilvio
> auburn, ma
> 774-272-1430
> www.behappyandfree.com
> 
> Fraud, Farce and Foreclosures
> by Steve Consilvio
> 
> It should not be to hard to get everyone to agree that the State
> creates winners and losers.  Bill Gates is the richest man in the
> world primarily because of sales to the government. “We the People,”
> pay taxes, and that money, in huge sums, goes to the coffers of
> Microsoft.  This is similarly true of Haliburton, Bechtel, builders of
> schools, suppliers, the teacher unions and state workers.  As a
> entreprenuer, I am supposed to think this is great.  There are lots of
> government contracts available, and I have the opportunity to get rich
> by impoverishing my neighbor.  As a citizen, however, I am a victim of
> the same system from which I feed.  Thomas Paine described this same
> exact situation 230 years ago when he wrote:
> 
> “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best
> state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one;
> for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a
> government, which we might expect in a country without government, our
> calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by
> which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost
> innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers
> of paradise.”
> 
> It is true that history repeats itself, and now we have come full
> circle, again.
> 
> The Sunday Telegram (Worcester, MA) of June 24 had a front page
> regarding the investment returns of state employees, and the front
> page of the Business section was about the loss of the American Dream
> and the rising rates of foreclosures.  My goal is to show you how
> these two events are historically and mathematically related, and why
> planes fly into banks.  The events of 9/11, the ultra-cost of paranoid
> security, and the impossible situation for young people who are being
> preyed upon by lenders, universities, mortgage companies, corporations
> and even their own parents is creating a marketplace that is not
> sustainable.  Unlike colonial times, however, there is no King to
> blame.  The only people we can blame is ourselves.
> 
> The simplest way to understand the problem is that the central bank
> both creates a national currency and devalues the currency by the way
> it manages it.  Since taxes are to be paid in the same currency, the
> perpetual burden of inflation is placed on the working people.  All
> the efficiency in the world fails, and eventually the best and only
> job available is to work for the government, either directly or
> indirectly.  Numbers have become so overwhelmingly important that we
> manufacture goods just to throw them away.
> 
> The government swells as the people get progressively poorer, creating
> two distinct classes of people and two types of buildings.  We have
> buildings to hold large groups, but not for people to live in.
> Government workers have pensions, health insurance, and cost of living
> increases, while the working people are ever burdened with paying for
> these benefits.  The working people lose their houses while government
> workers and suppliers plan early retirement and purchase a second
> home.  The government eventually becomes an advocate for idle
> gluttony, supporting infrastructure improvements for golf courses,
> ball parks, dinner and art districts.  Taking care of the rich becomes
> the only industry available, which eventually leads to men like Donald
> Trump building luxury condominiums and casinos.  The private sector
> becomes corrupted by the public sector.
> 
> Inflation, however, provides no escape, even for the rich.  Their high
> lifestyle comes with a high overhead, and it is as impossible to
> maintain a rich lifestyle as it is a poor one.  Inflation eats
> everyone alive, rich and poor, but the burden falls disproportionately
> on the poorest.
> 
> Fraud makes the situation worse, but that is just the rich stealing
> from the rich.  It is the expectations behind the fraud that is a
> farce.  People want to believe that 2+2=5 when they invest (boom), and
> are surprised to discover that 5=2+2 as well (bust.)  Math has no
> mercy, and the formula in your favor also works against you. Whatever
> gain is made must come at someone else’s expense, and eventually it
> will be made at your or your children’s expense.
> 
> Profit is a system of cost-shifting, not a system of trade.  It is our
> failure to trade that creates a situation where planes fly into the
> misnamed “trade” building.  Even the United Nations is built around
> the concept of profit, intellectual property and the bias of rich
> nations. It represents a political farce layered upon a mathematical
> farce, the same as for national and state governments.
> 
> The gap between the rich and the poor is not a mystery; the system
> itself creates both the consolidation of wealth as well as the
> inflation.  Both results are hard-wired into the currency system and
> the situation has reappeared here because the US Constitution
> recreated the same financial attributes as the previous constitutional
> monarch.  The perpetual budget crisis is a world-wide and historical
> phenomenon because money has always been understood, coined, and used
> in the same predatory way for profit, rather than for trade.
> 
> Fraud is telling a lie. A farce is believing a lie, thinking it is
> true.  There is no one person to blame, we are all participants in the
> farce.  The faith in profit is the same as the faith in a King as
> superior to all men was previously.  Profit, taxes and inflation are
> all intimately linked.  Each one drives the other.
> 
> Our problems do require intellectual rigor and moral courage to
> solve.  Fortunately, history also repeats itself in a positive regard,
> too.  We can have a renaissance; the choice is ours.   We must simply
> combine our compassion with the correct strategy.
> 
> Many are living in Hell right now, and there is a good chance that
> many of us will be going to Hell, too, and taking our children with
> us, as we teach and engage in profit-taking, capital gains, interest
> and usury.  The children both pay for and repeat the sins of their
> fathers.  Funny how that works, eh?  The apple doesn’t fall far from
> the tree.  The first lie ever told was to eat the apple, the second
> lie ever told was to sell them for profit.
> 
> As Isaiah wrote, “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the
> best from the land, but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured
> by the sword.”
> 
> Once a problem is properly diagnosed it is easy to fix.
> Unfortunately, our new Governor, like leaders and entrepreneurs before
> him, has not made any choices that indicates he understands the
> problem.

-- 


	   W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
      Center for Information, Technology & Society
         466 Pleasant St., Melrose, MA  02176
   781-662-4044  BMSLIB at MIT.EDU http://Cybertrails.org