Ponzi schemes;

[gsvol]

The biggest one of all.

 

[Plano Vol]

Oh, PONZI scheme, I thought it was someone's plan to get Richie laid. Heeeyyyy!

In all seriousness, I was flying back from Tucson a couple of years back with an old guy that told me that he and his group of investors were sinking all they had in pesos. I thought he was nuts at the time.....now I'm not so sure.

 

[gsvol]

Oh, PONZI scheme, I thought it was someone's plan to get Richie laid. Heeeyyyy!

In all seriousness, I was flying back from Tucson a couple of years back with an old guy that told me that he and his group of investors were sinking all they had in pesos. I thought he was nuts at the time.....now I'm not so sure.

ROGER SHERMAN(1721 1793)should be a name familiar to every American. As familiar as Washington, Madison, Jefferson and Adams. He is the only man to have signed all 4 documents surrounding the formation of the United States of America: The Continental Association of 1774, The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation and The United States Constitution.

He was a Judge of the Superior Court in New Haven, Connecticut, serving that office with distinction from 1766 until 1788. He served as Treasurer of Yale University from 1765 to 1776. He was renowned for his high intelligence and unswerving honesty and was described by John Adams “as honest as an angel and as
firm in the cause of American independence as Mount Atlas.” He served in the U.S.Senate from 1791 until his death in 1793.

Why is Roger Sherman*s name unfamiliar? HE WAS AN ENEMY OF PAPER MONEY!! In 1751, Roger Sherman and his brother William sued James Battle for paying a debt to their shop in New Milford, Connecticut, in depreciating paper currency.

Over a period of 15 months, Battle had charged “divers wares and merchandizes” amounting to 129 pounds of what Sherman assumed were pounds of Connecticut “Old Tenor”, a stable currency whose value were well preserved by taxation taking it out of circulation. But Battle assumed the debt was denominated in pounds of ever depreciating Rhode Island currency, tendered in same, and the Shermans took a beating in the payment and sued for recovery of loss by depreciation.

The Shermans lost when Battle argued that he was merely following the accepted custom of the day. In 1752, Sherman wrote his book “A Caveat Against Injustice or An Inquiry into the Evils of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange” indicting UNBACKED PAPER MONEY.

It was this experience that Sherman brought to the Constitutional Convention and prompted him to rise on August 28,1787 and propose new, more restrictive wording to Article 1,Section 10.

The standing version under consideration was worded this way: “No state shall coin money; nor grant letters of marque and reprisal; nor enter into any Treaty, alliance, or confederation; nor grant any title of Nobility.” (From Madison’s Notes of the Convention) “Judge Sherman and Mr. Wilson moved to insert the words *coin money* the words *nor emit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts* making these prohibitions absolute, instead of making the measures allowable with the consent of the Legislature of the U.S. Mr. Sherman thought this a FAVORABLE CRISIS FOR CRUSHING PAPER MONEY.

If the consent of the Legislature could authorize emissions of it, the friends of paper money would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to license it.” Mr. Sherman*s and Mr. Wilson*s motion was quickly agreed to and became the supreme law of the land.

Some additional quotations to ponder:

“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from a want of honor or virtue so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation” (John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1787)

“I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else, a legal tender.” (Thomas Jefferson)

“You have been doubtless been informed, from time to time, of the happy progress of our affairs. The principal difficulties seem in great measure to have been surmounted. Our revenues have been considerably
more productive than it was imagined they would be. I mention this to show the spirit of enterprise that prevails.” (George Washington in a letter to the Marquis de LaFayette, June 3, 1790 AFTER the United States Constitution prohibited unbacked paper money at Article 1, Section 10)

“Since the federal constitution has removed all danger of our having a paper tender, our trade is advanced fifty percent. Our monied people can trust their cash abroad, and have brought their coin into circulation.” (December 16, 1789 edition of The Pennsylvania
Gazette)

“Our country, my dear sir, is fast progressing in its political importance and social happiness.” (George Washington in a letter to the Marquis de LaFayette, March 19, 1791)

“The United States enjoys a sense of prosperity and tranquility under the new government that could hardly have been hoped for.” (George Washington in a letter to Catherine Macaulay Graham, July 19,1791)

“Tranquility reigns among the people with that disposition towards the general government which is likely to preserve it. Our public credit stands on that high ground which three years ago would have been
considered as a species of madness to have foretold.” (George Washington in a letter to David Humphreys, July 20, 1791)

“It is apparent from the whole context of the Constitution as well as the times which gave birth to it, that it was the purpose of the Convention to establish a currency consisting of the precious metals.

These were adopted by a permanent rule excluding the use of a perishable medium of exchange, such as certain agricultural commodities recognized by the statutes of some States as tender for debts, or the still more pernicious expedient of PAPER CURRENCY.” (Andrew Jackson, 8th Annual Message to Congress, December 5, 1836)

DESPITE WHAT YOU WERE TAUGHT IN SCHOOL, THE HISTORICAL RECORD IS CRYSTAL CLEAR: AMERICA WAS TO HAVE BEEN SPARED THE DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS OF AN UNBACKED PAPER MONEY SYSTEM. MOST OF THE PROBLEMS WE FACE TODAY CAN BE TRACED TO WHAT ANDREW JACKSON CALLED “THE PERNICIOUS EXPEDIENT OF PAPER MONEY”.

HISTORY TEACHES THAT AN “ARTIFICIAL” MONEY CREATES AN “ARTIFICIAL” WORLD WHERE THE PRICE FOR SOME ITEM...EVEN OUR MOST POPULAR WELFARE “PROGRAM”...CAN BE DEFERRED TO FUTURE GENERATIONS (OUR $11 TRILLION
NATIONAL DEBT) OR PAID WITH A “MONEY” CREATED OUT OF THIN AIR WHICH ROBS THE VALUE FROM THE MONEY WE MIGHT BE UNFORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE IN OUR POCKETS AT THAT MOMENT (INFLATION). AND ONE THING YOU MUST REMEMBER ABOUT INFLATION IS THAT IT IS NOT AN “EQUAL OPPORTUNITY” DESTROYER: THOSE FIRST IN LINE TO GET THEIR HANDS ON THE NEW MONEY ROLLING OFF THE PRESSES (THE MODERN FRIENDS OF PAPER MONEY) HAVE A CHANCE TO SPEND IT BEFORE IT LOSES ITS VALUE.

THE LITTLE PEOPLE (THAT’S US, FOLKS!) FARTHEST DOWN THE LINE ARE THE ONES WHO FEEL THE FULLEST EFFECTS OF THIS DESTRUCTIVE PROCESS.
---------------------------------------------------

Historian George Bancroft later wrote: “James Madison left his testimony that *the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender, either for public or private debts, was cut off.*

This is the interpretation of the clause, made at the time of its adoption by all the statesmen of that age, not open to dispute because too clear for argument, and never disputed so long as any one man who took part in framing the constitution remained alive.”

(Bancroft – founder of the U.S.Naval Academy at Annapolis among other accomplishments – wrote a book on this very subject entitled “A Plea for the Constitution of the United States: Wounded in the House of Its Guardians.”

During WWII, FDR – a serious friend of paper money – ostensibly to supply the war effort, ordered the printing plates for many historical books smelted. Bancroft’s book was among them. A photocopy of one of the remaining originals can be found here.

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”
— Judge Learned Hand, 1944

 

[jamesd1628]

The biggest one of all.

Perhaps not the biggest one of all. This guy has identified an even larger (and much scarier) one:

Ronald Wright, Civilization is a pyramid scheme

 

[gsvol]

Perhaps not the biggest one of all. This guy has identified an even larger (and much scarier) one:

Ronald Wright, Civilization is a pyramid scheme

It could be an intergalactic conspiracy. :unsure:

Or is our consumerist boom the illusory wealth of wastrels blowing an inheritance—by no means only their own?
Ronald Wright

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson,
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)


-------------------------------------


The wealth of the country flees the land
Like cottonseed on a wind
Blown by the fetid breath
Of money-pimps in Bedlam,
Pursuing the creed of masters
Who worship a market freed
Of all restraints on greed -
While politicians posture
And feed on delusions of power.
anon

--------------------4/------------

"Inflation was not some plague borne on the wind; it was a deliberate part of their official economic policy, needed, they said, to maintain prosperity. They didn't tell us that with it would come the highest interest rates since the Civil War. As average monthly mortgage payments more than doubled, home building nearly ground to a halt; tens of thousands of carpenters and others were thrown out of work. And who controlled both houses of the Congress and the executive branch at that time?"

"Campaigning across America in 1980, we saw evidence everywhere of industrial decline. And in rural America, farmers' costs were driven up by inflation. They were devastated by a wrongheaded grain embargo and were forced to borrow money at exorbitant interest rates just to get by. And many of them didn't get by. Farmers have to fight insects, weather, and the marketplace; they shouldn't have to fight their own government."

Ronald Reagan

Now we have the wrongheaded ethanol directives and everything else is exactly the same, and what is the Democrat party solution???? The same as that of FDR which was the greatest public monetary policy failure in the history of the American Republic!!gs

 

[Rasputin_Vol]

Biggest Ponzi scheme = Social Security