[GJM] Announcement: American Monetary Institute conference

[Jack Lancaster]

www.jackaikenlancaster.4t.com

Steve Nieman <stevenieman at mac.com> wrote:  Steve,

I enjoyed your essay Fraud, Farce and Foreclosures immensely.

Could you grant me your permission to publish it on two websites I 
maintain, and my blog? (we will prominently cite you as the author). 
I can't afford to pay you now; maybe down the road when a positive 
cash flow is more in the offing. One thing about resisting the 
current monetary/credit infrastructure –– it's an uphill, dogged 
battle...

For your info, a company I helped start called the Downwind Corp and 
its business plan calls for breaking even. We do not aim for 
profits. We feel it's wasted energy and resources. Instead, we 
offer our stakeholders access to our assets at below-market rates. 
We also over time track their patronage, which allows them to 
eventually buy their pro-rata share of the worth of our company 
without putting a dime down *up front* (binary economics).

Our major obstacle to staying in business?: exorbitant costs of 
(fiat) capital.

So far, we're hanging in there. We're losing money, but building 
good human relationships, and educating people on needed reforms of 
money/credit to make our economy intuitively robust.

Take care and keep writing and advocating; your observations are 
right on IMO,
Steve Nieman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Jul 16, 2007, at 4:50 PM,

>> 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.


_______________________________________________
Discussion mailing list
Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net
http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://globaljusticemovement.net/pipermail/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net/attachments/20070718/be6a9cdd/attachment-0001.html