What Will You U$E For Currency When T$HTF?

The more we move toward a cashless society, the more we are at risk should some financial, political, or natural disaster transpire which weakens or destroys societal and governmental dynamics. What people will accept in payment or trade for scarce and critical supplies could threaten your life if you don’t have any, or the cost may be more than you can afford, if you do. Here are some ideas to help you be prepared.

by H. Michael Sweeney proparanoid.wordpress.com    proparanoid.net    facebook

copyright © 2016, all rights reserved. Permission to repost hereby granted provided entire post with all links in tact, including this notice and byline, are included. Please comment any such repost to original posting.

In this post you will learn…

• what makes money valuable is also what can make it worthless;

• plastic and precious metals are useless in the aftermath of crisis;

• why government frowns and suppresses barter, and why to embrace it anyway;

• cash is usually aftermath King… but not always;

• whole new currencies evolve in serious or long term aftermath.

What money is, and why it has value

Money is nothing more than a convenient way to conduct ‘commerce’ (trade goods and services) with a standard and portable stand-in for something else of value. For this to work, all people within the trading area must agree to use it as such, and ‘it’ must have a definable and concretely known value. Any system of money is best handled by the local government, be it a tribal village in ancient times, or a modern industrialized nation. Or, it can be done by a network of banking and financial institutions, or even a combination with government. As we will see, banking options are good for them, bad for everyone else.

The later is what we have, today, and it suffers two problems most of us are aware of, both stemming from the banking side. To fully appreciate that, we should step back in time just a bit. Please take the time to read what you may otherwise presume already to know, because the points made in this section will play to remaining sections in critical ways. This is because only governments used to issue money, and to establish its value, they could not and dare not create money unless they held something of value in reserves somewhere, something of concrete and great value to back it up. Most nations, as did America, used Gold; the ‘Gold Standard.’

Whatever the value standard was, a citizen could go to a bank or government Purser, and demand to trade in the currency for its value in that item (i.e., Gold), or vice versa. This system guaranteed the value of the currency to a known unit of measure, and tended to help establish and maintain a stable economy, and made international trade viable; each currency had a concretely known valuation, and established trust between nations that the standard item, itself, could be obtained, if desired, to settle any balance of trade debt which might exist.

Then came the banks with their own idea, called Central Banks, which enables the printing of Fiat Currency, which is money which has nothing of value backing it. Enter the Federal Reserve Banking System. It has cost you and me a significant sum of our personal lifetime earrings. Some say we have literally been sold into slavery to the banks. Learn more about exactly how much it has cost you personally, here. Many, as do I, call it Treason, including the prophetic warnings of our Founding Fathers:

• “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, 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 in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill of 1809 (millions of us, including myself, did wake up homeless with the Mortgage Derivative Collapse and associated ‘too big to fail’ bailouts, and we have had nothing but inflation and deflation cycles, not to mention devaluation of the dollar since establishing the Fed)

• “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” –Thomas Jefferson

• “… The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.” -Thomas Jefferson (a reference to the National Debt)

• “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.” -James Madison

• “If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.” -Andrew Jackson (Banks are corporations)

• “The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.” -Abraham Lincoln (the Fed is all about interest paid to the banks for every dollar printed.)

• “Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands.” – Theodore Roosevelt (in the long-running debate about establishing a central bak.)

But the Fed would become reality just in time to pay for WWI with fiat money. But that was not the first time. In the early days of forming new States within the United States, Banks could also print their own money with no attachment to or obligation of government, hopefully backing it up with some kind of standard; a certain degree of trust was involved, and many people found that their banker was a crook. This practice, both legitimate and criminal, was especially common in Gold and Silver mining towns, where shipping precious metals was risky due to bandits. Other negotiable instruments also came to exist, which can similarly be thought of as forms of money. Stocks, Bonds, Notes, Futures, and more. But these featured valuations tied to more complex and less tangible things, and were not simple enough for usage as currency except with brokers and special institutional trading firms.

But several new ways for banks to print their own money also arose which were useful enough by all. One is the ‘Check,’ your checking account. It is merely a highly organized and easily validated (to a point) method of trading in I.O.U.s. Anyone can write an I.O.U. on a any piece of paper, and if the other person accepts it as a debt, and the writer honors it, it has value. And, it can be passed from one person to another until paid, like a Marker used in the underworld.

But people do not trust strangers, and the bank’s checking systems addressed that by using the bank as a kind of validation and tracking of the debt, and the debtor. The underworld uses fear and organized crime to do the same with markers. And, do we not fear the wrath of our banks and the law should we write a bad check? This is called debt bondage, a very real and powerful political and social control system that keeps the locals, that’s you and me, in line for fear of loosing all they own. Unless, of course, you simply choose to  opt out, as have I.

As far as checking is concerned, eventually, the check must be traded for real currency, so no new money was actually created, but while in circulation, the total amount of ‘money in use’ is greater than had been printed, a pseudo inflation factor. Today, some 20 billion checks are written each year, with a value of 26 trillion. To put that into perspective, it would pay off the entire National Debt with money to spare. It is also roughly 20 times the value of all U.S. money in circulation. So is the National Debt, and though no causal connection seems to exist, it is an interesting coincidence, is it not?

Banks also ‘print’ money by loaning money that does not exist. They are allowed by law to loan up to 20 times the money they hold in their vaults from depositors. They write a check, and you then use that ‘money’ to write more checks for whatever purpose the loan was intended. They get deposited somewhere, and eventually returned to the issuing bank. You make monthly payments to the bank, money against which more loans can be made. As long as less than 1 in 20 of loaned dollars is converted to cash withdrawal, the bank has gotten away with printing at least 19 defacto dollars; another pseudo inflation factor. A loan is for fictitious money, and how to you repay a fiction? A question well asked, and some have an answer which will astonish you, and though giving you hope, you will fear it, as well.

The worst offender is the Central Banking System, which allows governments to print money with absolutely nothing behind it; no standard. The government itself is printing nothing more than an I.O.U. The Bank, in our case being the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed), which is NOT a Federal Agency, but a banker-controlled corporation. The Treasury prints money in the form of Federal Reserve Notes backed only by interest bearing Treasury Bonds given to the Federal Reserve (functionally, an I.O.U.), and the Federal Reserve Note is itself therefore also an I.O.U. Some of these are sold to anyone wishing to buy them, quite often hundreds of millions of dollars held by wealthy men of note, but also, ordinary citizens. Those unsold are held by the banking cadre.

This is an automatic inflation driving machine for several reasons, not the least of which is it allows government to fund any massive and costly adventure without worrying about actually paying for it, as long as they are willing to drive up the National Debt, which no one is ever going to pay off. The downside is, of course, that our purchasing power continues to dwindle, and at some point, the dollar will need to be officially devalued, and only YOU and I will loose in that deal. Meanwhile, every increase of the national debt is de facto devaluation; you and I loose purchasing power as if officially devalued. Simultaneously, more and more of tax dollars go to the FED to pay off INTEREST (only) on T Bills, and that money goes directly to the bankers. The debt is NEVER reduced.

If it were, the Fed would actually collapse. Here is an explanation from David Graeber, and English Anthropologist, regarding the first central bank in existence: “In fact this [debt] is precisely the logic on which the Bank of England—the first successful modern central bank—was originally founded. In 1694, a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,200,000 to the king. In return they received a royal monopoly on the issuance of banknotes [their ‘Fed’]. What this meant in practice was they had the right to advance IOUs for a portion of the money the king now owed them to any inhabitant of the kingdom willing to borrow from them, or willing to deposit their own money in the bank—in effect, to circulate or “monetize” [create fiat currency] the newly created royal debt. This was a great deal for the bankers: they got to charge the king 8 percent annual interest for the original loan and simultaneously charge interest on the same money to the clients who borrowed it, but it only worked as long as the original loan remained outstanding. To this day, this loan has never been paid back. It cannot be. If it ever were, the entire monetary system of Great Britain would cease to exist.”

There is much more which can be and should be said, but this is not about the evils of the Federal Reserve or financial institutions. The intent was simply to give a glimpse at what money is, and what makes it valuable (or not), in NORMAL circumstances. And, in normal circumstances, the ONLY thing which makes Federal Reserve Notes valuable is a law passed in support of creation of the Fed, which says and which is echoed right on the money, itself, that it is good for all debts, public and private; should you refuse to accept it as such, the debt is forgiven under that law; we are forced to accept it.

 

But what happens when TSHTF?

In any serious financial, societal, or natural disaster, all bets may be off, and cash may either become a monstrous burden, or have no value at all. To the extent that social systems and governmental control fails, or their function is diluted, the value of money can suddenly become undefined, except by the seller. It is not just a matter of free-market price setting, but weather or not the seller will see value in money, at all, the government no longer being in a position to enforce the law which says it must be accepted.

Pre War Germany was in severe financial crises which ultimately helped to sweep Hitler into power. Of course, he blamed the Jews, who had nothing to do with it, but scapegoats are easy to come by when people are scared. Here, a woman purchases some food with a basket full of money. Germany’s inflation rate was so high that they were printing 100 billion Deutchmark bills (i.e., a single DM100,000,000,000 bill) for public use. MONEY WAS ESSENTIALLY WORTHLESS. Welcome to fiat currency run amok.

Some say to hoard precious metals for such crisis, but that is foolishness, because you can’t spend gold. For one thing, it is too valuable, and another, it is too difficult to validate without special chemicals, scales, and knowledge. How does the seller know it is real Gold, or what its actual value currently is? Not only will there be an issue as to weight, which is multiplied by a given value per ounce, but there will be no way to know (where a crises involves loss of communications), what the actual current value per ounce actually is. The wise seller must therefore significantly undervalue any metal offered in payment.

And how do you buy something low in value with something high in value, when there is no way to ‘make change?’ Hoarding Gold is fine for long-term protection of large cash holdings, but it is next to useless and extremely costly to attempt to use it as currency in a crisis.

THEREFORE, if actual money starts to fail in usefulness, whole new currencies will arise.

 

What will be the new currency in a crisis?

Yes, new currencies, and nothing like money as we know it. But like money, where it is still accepted in a crisis, the value thereof will be determined mostly by the seller, and this will give new meaning to the expression, ‘shop around.’ The most common alternate currencies will become food, water, fuels, and ammunition. Too a lesser degree, anything in high demand and low supply, such as weapons and tools, or anything key to survival. Being aware of that in advance is a great advantage, because there are two things in common with all these items which allows for good preparation.

The first is, that they have a relatively low value now, before there is a crisis. You can afford to stockpile, and would be wise to do so, taking into consideration storage space requirements and shelf life. It would be good to have at least a small hoard of each item in quantities greater than for reserves for personal consumption during the emergency and, where storage space, shelf life, and finances permit, to perhaps have a large hoard of one or more items on the list to become your personally favored currency.

The second is, that anyone can produce them, themselves, to one degree or another, both before and after a crisis. Anyone can sink a well or fetch water from nature, and transport it to where it is less available for ‘profit.’ Anyone can grow and store food if they have the land for it. Anyone can chop wood or make alcohol (fuels) if they but arrange to do so. Anyone can reload spent munitions if they have a loader and can obtain gunpowder, and for the matter, anyone can make gunpowder if they know how to find the raw materials and they are locally available.

Lead for ammunition is another matter, but it is cheap to buy ahead of crisis. So the purchase of a supply of lead and tools to form bullets and reload might be a great idea. Yet most people will not do any of these things, or cannot due to finances or lack of knowledge, and it is exactly that which gives them an excellent future value – extra value, in fact, because in aftermath situations, the normal supply chain of these things has been interrupted or entirely cut off, and access to the knowledge or finances to acquire them with it.

Once TSHTF, you are locked into your current state of affairs; you are either prepared to offer the right currency at an affordable rate, or you are slave and at the mercy to/of those who can. Only one of these two groups has a good chance at survival. That is the worst kind of debt slavery.

 

Barter, the alternative currency

Click to get a glimpse at doing your own barter network from a legal perspective.

The government hates barter and suppresses it in a mountain of laws restricting its use. Barter is, in fact, the basis of the new evolving currencies just discussed. But for those in that second, hapless group just mentioned, they may be able to survive for a while by bartering with their earthly possessions, albeit at a costly rate of exchange. A $3,000 professional video camera might be good for a tank of gas, or a few days worth of food; what value is there in a video camera without electricity? But it might be accepted if there is some hope that, eventually, power will be restored, or if the parts might be useful to a tinkerer seeking to build something mechanically useful.

But barter can work well, even before a crisis, despite the laws. The laws are there because the barter concept tends to ‘cheat’ government out of taxes. If you buy something with dollars, you got taxed on the income from whence you got the dollars, and the seller is taxed on the income he earned, and there is likely a sales tax, as well. In barter, as originally conceived and employed before the laws existed, you simply gave labor in exchange for items, or traded items. As long as both parties agreed the exchange was acceptable value given for acceptable value received, it was a done deal. Yes, sometimes one side might feel the value was short, and ask for augmentation with a little cash thrown in.  Or not.

Barter best works in a network situation involving more than two parties. You have Oranges and want Apples, I have Grapes and want Oranges, and someone else has Apples and wants Grapes. No problem, a three-way swap. But to do that takes an organized network with the means to track what is needed and match it to what is offered and available elsewhere. Barter associations or organizations are set up, and of course, that takes effort and manpower, and a building that has monthly rent, and other things which take actual money.

The other thing a barter group could do, was to accept goods or labor obligations (I.O.U. for work to be done) as if a deposit in a bank, against which the member offering such could make some combination of present or future withdrawal of other goods or services as they became available and needed. This allows conversion of unwanted or surplus items into future barter trade power, rendering the barter group as a kind of retail store and universal service provider. Again, government does not like anything resembling a bank in procedure, and would normally tax a retailer on inventory.

As all these functions take money to facilitate, barter groups would charge a small fee for a transaction based on the dollar value of the transaction. DOLLARS were still used as the MEDIUM for determining TRADE VALUATIONS. That meant creating a corporate entity to facilitate and organize barter transactions, and typically, charging a membership fee to allow access to the system. That was what led government to take interest in and to legislate against barter; such systems could quickly grow in membership and began processing huge numbers of transactions, some of which were themselves huge in valuation.

I, for example, belonged to such a group, and in a single transaction, moved $35,000 in goods, against which I would acquire needed goods and services which enabled me to live more inexpensively for a full decade — until the government passed laws which forced the barter group out of business, and started taxing everyone involved to the point where the advantage seemed lost. But it need not be that way, especially once TSHTF.

You can join an existing barter program, but if you do, you should also form your own local barter group, because the big programs will not be available in a crisis. Anyone do so without formal corporate existence, and without charging fees, and without a retail or banking format. I highly encourage it, though you should check with a lawyer as laws vary State to State (click the above image for the Oregon situation). Yes, there will be some concern about tax reporting, but that is a minor issue unless you start dealing in large volumes of goods and services. Frankly, most people who barter this way report nothing, because unless it is in volume, it isn’t even worth the trouble to track and report it, not to them, or the government. But the VALUE is in HAVING A NETWORK IN PLACE IN A CRISIS…   priceless.

When TSHTF, especially if communications are down, it is both difficult and even potentially dangerous to attempt to form a network. Danger stems from the fact that, unless care is taken to avoid strangers, you may offer to form a network, in which case you state what you have of interest, and if they think they have more guns than you, and want what you have, they know where to get it without cost. Moreover, mutual defense is a thing which can itself become a barter commodity, assuming you have the guns and manpower of good use to others; it is, after all, another kind of service.

So to prepare for a crisis, don’t just hoard key supplies, but establish a barter network, even if you do not choose to use it. Doing so amplifies the value of your preferred currency, because you already have people willing to accept it fairly. Consider these words of wisdom:

• “The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.” Adam Smith, Scottish Philosopher.

My take is that barter is natural to man, and as such, is an unstated free right to undertake at will – to hell with government, or in reverse, if government has gone to hell, what else do we have to trade with, but barter;

• “Capitalism invariably boils down to barter between two willing parties, neither of whom uses force to work with the other.” Ben Shapiro, Political Commentator.

When TSHTF, force becomes the only commodity the weak minded and hapless will have to trade with. To strengthen your defenses, you need something better, as well as a means of countering force with force of your own. A Barter network gives you both, where mutual defense agreements become a thing which may be bartered: If I have superior weapons and more gun bearers than you, an imbalance exists which might be offset in goods or other services.

• “In primitive society, Man produced directly for the satisfaction of his own wants, but with the development of society came differentiation of functions; exchange and barter arose, various trades sprang up, and with the necessity of commercial intercourse, cam the invention of money.” Charles A. Beard, renowned Historian.

This sums up this entire post in the most direct of statements: barter came first, money after. When money fails to function usefully, we must be ready to barter, either with a new currency of convenience, or outright barter networking. Our very lives could depend upon it.

Not fully convinced? Want more information?

May I humbly suggest some further reading about WHY you should worry about flying excrement from an unexpected fan, and also offer some additional valuable resources? Here is a compendium of useful material on the dangers of crisis and the topic of being prepared, not just in terms of currency, but other considerations which are well beyond the scope of this post. These are Facebook ‘pages,’ so you can FOLLOW them for updates. Please consider to Follow my blog, as well.

• The Fema, Martial Law, Revolution Database. Don’t let the title scare you away; its a compendium of articles and posts about the likelihood and risks of various forms of civil unrest and social, economic, or natural disasters, as well as general advice such as found in the above post. It’s sub-name is When All Hell Breaks Loose.

• The Post Apocalyptic Library. A compendium of resources where you can find critical how-to information needed for survival in a crisis. Everything from how to make a torch to how to make a portable generator from a lawn mower. The idea is to visit those sites and print the instructions, and place them in a safe place and in your ‘go bag’ so that you will have them when needed; they won’t be available once TSHTF.

What the Federal Reserve Has Cost You Personally

This article will help you estimate the (%#@!) huge number

by H. Michael Sweeney

Copyright©2012, all rights reserved. permissions to reproduce by request only to proparanoid at century link net

 Shut down the fed

Note: If you oppose the FED, you may wish to review the 24 Presidential Campaign Planks proposed to specifically cure the problem with respect to the FED, the National Debt, Tax, and how money should be printed.

Beginning of the End

The Federal Reserve Bank System (the FED) was established in 1913 by some serious international con artists who used deceit, lies, and disinformation to trick Congress into approving it. The FED is indeed a privately held corporation run for the significant benefit of the banks as well as some ‘tricky-dicky’ (a bribery, of sorts) benefits to legislators and the President, also at citizen expense. When I say ‘banks,’ I mean three kinds.

1) The big New York banks and big European International banks reap huge reward, as they were the ones who established the FED and thus get to be the first to feed at the trough. They control it, not Congress. Like any private corporation, they have a Board of Directors and a functional CEO. Sure, they listen to the President and Congress for input on what they are might SHOULD do, but in the end, they DICTATE what they will do and sell it to government as a ‘cure’ for whatever sparked their input.

2) Next comes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, which are creations of these same bankers, in partnership with other globalist interests from the likes of the Bilderbergers, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, modern Illuminati all say some (me included). Despite their flowery and sugar coated statements about what they do, they work no differently than the FED member banks to profit at the expense of everyone else.

They get a goodly go at the trough because Congress now allows the FED to print US currency for their exclusive and seemingly limitless use in addition to all the money Congress asks them to print. So, in effect, the U.S. Currency has become a de facto ‘world currency,’ but not to make the dollar stronger, because it actually weakens it through inflation over which Congress has little to say. And you and I pay the interest on it all. It’s called The National Debt, and your IRS tax payments largely go directly to the bankers to help repay it (but it will never be paid in full, as it is impossible to keep it from growing larger).

3) Finally comes all other American Banks, who get minimal benefit but who get all the regulation and dictates the FED chooses to supply, policies designed to stifle small bank growth while encouraging the New York/International banks of the first group to grow even bigger. THIS, by the way, is exactly the OPPOSITE of what the FED was originally created to do, the opposite of what they claimed it would do in order to gain Congressional approval. In short, they lied, and this post will tell you all about that.

 Shut down the fed

Undue Banking Fees:

Because it is a Monopoly controlled by the heads of the various key banks who sit on the Board of the Federal Reserve, they make it less profitable for the lesser banks; forcing them to charge more for banking services, which in turn allows the big New York and International banks to do the same, the difference being the Fed banks enjoy a greater boost in profits under FED policy. But this is a mere annoying pittance compared to other costs, and we will not include it in your personal cost calculations. That said, there is this one instance I’d really like you to take a look at, because it is quite symptomatic of banking abuse, and because I’m hoping you will contribute to a fund to provide relief to the family the article discusses.

Shut down the fed

Usury Interest:

It is neither Federal, nor a Bank

Even when the FED sets extremely low interest rates, it translates to Usury (excessive) interest costs to those who borrow from the bank. Why? Under the same laws which set up the FED, banks were allowed to loan out more money than they had in the vaults, at a ratio of ten loaned dollars for every dollar they had. You deposit $100, and they loan $1000. The payment on that being $100 a month, lets say, meaning they then loan out yet another $1000 each month. But where did that extra $900 in money come from, and the $900 after that, and so forth?

This money, which keeps going like some grand pyramid scheme as long as borrowers keep coming forward and payments keep coming in… DOES NOT EXIST. It never existed, and will not exist until you pay it back over time from your income. It was created out of thin air out of nothing and becomes real only by the sweat of your brow (you are a ‘debt’ slave producing money for the banks). But it even gets better than that for the banks.

When you get the loan, they credit their books with the fake money, and debit your account with a charge of the value of the loan, and give you a check. You can’t easily use that check to buy a car or house, so you deposit back into the bank so you can write your own check for the purchase. The deposit of the loan money shows as a credit to both your account and theirs, at least until your check for the purchase clears, at which time they are effectively reversed. In the meantime, they can loan $10,000 more on your $1,000 loan, and yet again every time you make a payment, they can loan yet more to create another slave and a whole new pyramid of loans that will result. Pyramid upon pyramid.

So in essence, you and tens to hundreds or even thousands of other persons are paying interest on the same original $900 worth of money created out of nothing, and the money loaned, and the money paid back. The bank was never at risk of their own money (it was your $100), and yet will be earning tons of interest for nothing and nothing on nothing and nothing on nothing on nothing, again and again, and yet again. THAT is Usury, and some State Laws which forbid Usury have been successfully used to stop foreclosures because the banks were unable to prove they had any risk for which to justify interest charges or harm as defined by breach of agreement to pay. It is a hard case to win, but it has been done.

The upshot on Usury? For most folks about 17% of their income goes to such interest charges. We will be using that information later. No need to calculate anything, yet. S

 Shut down the fed

Unemployment Costs:

1964 Scranton Jobless Protests

In my case, I’ve been unemployed because of financial chaos due to FED control (inflation/recession cycle, one begets the other) for a total of 8 years in my life. The use of the formulae herein compensates for that in terms of ‘would have beens,’ but the actual earnings computed thereby are in error by an incalculable sum due to the simplified methods employed.

If you are like me, you may therefore wish to add in an estimated ‘unemployment cost,’ at the end based on some other, arbitrary sum. There are two ways unemployment impacts the number you will wish to reflect upon. The obvious is lost wages, but if you use the math suggested, that will be compensated for automatically. But while unemployed, both you and your would-be employer were not paying into your retirement funds as required by the Social Security Act, and any special employer provisions for other retirement programs. You may wish to consider that when we get to the section on lost retirement income.

 Shut down the fed

Inflation (a hidden tax):

The sneaky benefit to government of the FED is that they can print money anytime they want to fund anything they want without actually having to pay for it with a new Tax Bill. That’s why the same rats tend to get reelected, because unless they vote to raise a tax, voters tend to give them little mind and presume them doing their job. Of course of late, a lot of voters are realizing that the other reason to get upset is when Rats don’t read Bills and vote them in only to find them unconstitutional, taking away our freedoms, and bringing us closer to (fill in the blank and please review these links, here: communism, socialism, fascism, police state, martial law, armed revolution, etc.).

Start with the first year you were an independent citizen wage earner living on your own. Hopefully you remember your hourly wage or how much you made a year. Multiply your hourly wage by 2,200 (hrs. in a typical work year) to approximate a year’s earnings, or just jot down your annual wages. We won’t even bother with overtime wages, unless you wish to fudge on the 2,200 figure because you have always had a lot of overtime. An annual figure would naturally include it already.

Go to the inflation calculator and see what that wage equates to, today.  Example: in 1971 I earned $3.25 hr., or $7150 a year, which equates to $38,056, today. Get your answers, and then continue…

But wait. In my most recent pay hike I earned $14.25 an hour, or $31,350 a year. For most of us, we are earning less today than we should compared to the information at the calculator. This is our clue something beyond mere inflation is afoot, and we need to compute and identify what it is.

So subtract the two and we get $6,706 — income lost this year in wages over what the inflation calculation indicates we should have been making. Multiply that times the number of intervening years and divide by two and you end up with the (approximate) total cost of inflation to your earnings capacity — because all those pay increases you got over the years were increasingly worth less and less than their face value. In my example, its $137,473, which I’ll refer to later as ‘lost income.’

Now if you were lucky, you managed to earn a heck of a lot more in pay hikes over the year, so you may end up with a negative number. Great for you, at least until we figure the rest of it out… because the more you earn, it seems, the more it costs you in the end. So run the calculation, anyway, and jot down the resulting negative number so you get an accurate final answer.

Next go to the gasoline historical price chart and see how much gas cost that first year you worked (use the blue line). In 1971 it was 36 cents a gallon(!) Now gasoline is not a true indicator of inflation because it is also subject to forces of supply and demand, and some of you may be protesting my wishing to use it. I have a reason:

Many things we purchase such as the real estate sector also do not see their pricing held to the inflation standard, either, and are less determined by supply and demand than they are by control of interest by the FED. Real Estate, especially, which is a major portion of one’s budget even if a renter, is a so impacted. As it happens, most sectors’ price fluctuations tend to follow that of the price of gasoline in at least a general way. So bear with me please, as gasoline is the only easy-to-use baseline indicator that allows us to address all inter-related phenomenon across multiple sectors. It is at least going to get us into the ballpark.

Subtract from that first year’s gas price from today’s price at the pump ($3.50 here) to get the inflated price of gas. Next, in order to use gas prices as an indicator and factor we can use to compute its impact, we need to normalize that figure based on $1 worth of gas in the starring year, which means we need to compute a multiplier, a ‘factor.’

To do that, divide the original price into one dollar to get your factor (.36 into 1.00 = 2.78 – you could have bought 2.78 gallons). If the original was greater than $1, your factor will be a fractional part (e.g., 1.75 into 1.00 = .57 gallons). Now, THAT figure is the cost in inflation for a single dollar spent on gas, at today’s price. I’m saying it also is generally representative of all money’s spent for anything. Since it also impacts the value of money in savings, it applies to pretty much everything you’ve ever earned, because every cent you’ve earned has been spent on something, even if just savings (you were buying future money).

So finish calculating how much you’ve earned, which generally will be quite well approximated by going back to our earlier calculations and adding the first years earnings to the last years earnings, multiplying by the number if years between, and dividing by two. For me that’s $7,150 + $31,350 = $38,500 x 41 = $1,578,500 divided by two = $789,250. Never made millionaire, did I? Few of us did, or will.

To this figure we should now add back in the ‘lost income’ figure from the earlier section. $789,250 + $137,473 = $926,723 in ‘inflation adjusted income.’ Damn. Still not a millionaire!

Now multiply that times the computed gasoline factor to see the inflation cost for goods and services (and savings) over the lifetime. $926,723  x 2.78 factor = $2,576,290.  Well, looks like, thanks to the FED, that I SHOULD have been not just a millionaire, but a multi-millionaire!

Yes, I know… that figure is  more than we earned, isn’t it? Don’t worry, it will make sense when we sum it all up, which follows our final calculations:

 Shut down the fed

Back to Usury

Yes!

Now its time to add in the Usury figure (17% of our income); we multiply the above total by 1.17 to get $3,014,259.  That difference between that number and your actual income of record is how much the banks have indirectly benefited by your gleeful participation in their little credit scam put over on the Federal government, and citizens, alike. That is what it actually cost you for your share of their profiteering.

In my case, I subtract the $789,250 (my actual life’s earnings), for a cost of $2,225,009. And 80 cents, but who’s counting. The FED certainly hopes YOU aren’t counting, and Congress, too, for the matter. Because if you did, you might feel like sparking some sort of major reform that started with getting rid of everyone in D.C., as well as the Fed. Occupy might end up being who sits in Congress, at least until the National Guard showed up.

Problems with my math?

If you were sharp, you probably have come up with an objection to my reasoning regarding the 17%. Sure you can argue that some of that money (interest on debt) did NOT go to banks at all, but went to other sources like oil companies, manufacturers and retailers who extended us credit, and even to taxes… but don’t forget each one of them in almost every case, to earn your purchases, borrowed from the bank to build their product, factories, and finance doing business.

Like you, they had to pay it back. Which is exactly what the taxes are for.

Regarding taxes, bear in mind that the bulk of all tax revenue goes directly back to the Federal Reserve to pay them interest on the money they print, which is nothing more than an I.O.U. from government to the FED. All of it remains Usury, and your 17% went to cover that one way or the other, as did that of businesses. Oh, excuse me. I forgot. The BIG corporations, the ones who tend to be run by Boards with financial officers who come from the banking industry… tend not to pay ANY taxes. So that’s another way you and I get the shaft by the FED, I suppose. But it does not change the equations or reasoning used herein, it simply makes it less possible to ever repay the National Debt.

 Shut down the fed

Lost Purchase Power:

And, as stated, this huge total is not how much money you ‘spent,’ because it equals far greater than you even earned. But IT IS HOW MUCH VALUE IN TODAYS DOLLARS YOU’VE LOST IN PURCHASE POWER. If there had been no inflation, no Usury (and you did not borrow, but paid cash) and you continued to get those pay raises in an economy largely free of inflation and recession, your income would be the same as we adjusted for, and possibly higher (one can so argue, because in a healthy economy, raises are more frequent and tend to be bigger).

We need to restate that, because it can be confusing.

YOUR PURCHASE POWER for a given dollar would have remained more steady and be more like what it was way back when, which in TODAYS dollars, would buy you that larger figure in purchasing power. You would truly have an improved standard of living based on wealth (not merely improvements in technology), instead of what you really have, which is an illusion of a better standard wrought only by technological benefits, but dampened by a diminutive purchasing power.

Put yet another more pictorial way, you would be driving a sports car, a motor home, an SUV, and a pickup truck, have a nice boat and mooring, and a luxury home AND retirement home, both well furnished – instead of an apartment and a three-year-old family car. Everything would be paid for and you would have significant cash in the bank. There would be extremely low taxes by comparison, as well, because there would be no National Debt and therefore no interest for government to repay. There would be elected officials in government responsive to the people, not slaves under control of banks and corporations.

 Shut down the fed

Lost Retirement Income

If you are currently retired, the math herein points to many ways you are likely enjoying a smaller monthly retirement income than you would be enjoying otherwise. If not yet retired, you have that to look forward to with displeasure. The topic is far too complex to include in the formulation as there are too many kinds of retirement incomes, but the two which deserve our dialog.

are Social Security and Stock investment plans as part of a corporate retirement package over and above Social Security  (IRA and Investment Funds, etc.).

Investment funds because, in the FED induced cycles of inflation/recession, all these forms of investment have suffered significant stock valuation losses. In a way, these in turn actually drive the cycle to wilder extremes and amplify the problem (e.g., a large institutional investor in the education sector may be forced to raise tuition, or a manufacturer to lay off employees and close a plant). So this form of investment is significantly impacted, especially in this last financial meltdown and the FED’s response to print trillions to give to banks ‘too big to fail.’

As for SS, had not the FED increased the National Debt so much beyond any hope of repayment, Congress would never have had need to dip into the SS reserves you and I paid into the fund for our retirement, and it would therefore now actually have money sitting there WITH EARNED INTEREST, and our checks would be significantly larger than they are now. As it stands, we will already earn less than we put in, unless we live well beyond the expected lifetime and they don’t pull the plug on payments altogether, as they keep discussing as a ‘viable option.’ Yeah, do that and find out how many senior citizens own guns, me thinks.

So feel free to compute a number by whatever means you wish for your losses to retirement income, if you like, and add it in, as well.

 Shut down the fed

Add it all up

THAT is your cost for the FED. The only think perhaps missing is the medical bills you will pay from the Coronary you have reading this, or the repairs to your car and your body from the bullet holes gathered trying to crash into the nearest Federal Reserve Bank to get your money back. Uh… don’t try that unless perhaps filming for the next Jackass movie.

You now work nearly half the year to pay your fair share in taxes. It won’t be long before you work year ‘round’ and still lose ground. Tennessee Ernie Ford, a famous Country star of decades gone by had a number one hit song about financial slavery born of the early coal industry in the Appalachians. It seems like the best way to end this piece; Sixteen Tons:

                                                       You load sixteen tons what do you get

                                                       Another day older and deeper in debt

                                                       Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go

                                                       I owe my soul to the company store

 Shut down the fed

Oops! One last cost, not financial

If, like me, you choose to go public with your protest of the Fed, you will be joining the ranks of an elite group of troublemakers who pay yet another price: You will get on a list of people to be watched by the FED Cyber Police. They don’t really have a ‘Police,’ but they apparently feel themselves above the Law and have sought to establish a Cyber unit to track the doings on line of people who criticize the Fed. Here is their actual Request for Proposals on how to do this.

Presumably, at some point, they will have Congress deem us terrorists (too late, actually… they’ve already done that). So perhaps instead they will expand the NDAA powers and allow not only the Military to vanish or assassinate us, but also the FED. Come on, Obama, your banking friends need just a little more of your (unlawful, tyrannical, fascist police state) power.

But what am I saying? The FED has more money than… well, even exists, it seems. They don’t need Congressional empowerment. They can afford to pay contract hit men, cyber thugs or gun totting variety. The Mafia does it and gets away with it, mostly. The CIA does it and gets away with it, entirely. The Military now does it and gets away with it, Obamaly. I’ve even heard accusations that the FBI has, empirically.

All I have to say is (expletive deleted) FED, your days are numbered shorter than mine. Take your best shot.

NOTE: If you enjoyed this post, you may also like the test you can take to see if you are a Concerned Web Citizen or just another Web Walleroo?

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How FED Conspirator Bank Robs the Poor, and Their Dead

Bank of America Insults my Patriotism by Their Very Name

So does the Federal Reserve

by H. Michael Sweeney

I had just finished posting a blog about the fraudulent means and deceit employed by the founders of the Federal Reserve Banking System which has raked in trillions of dollars of profits at taxpayer expense since founded in 1910… when the very first reader of the post wrote something which set me aback. This is not just because of the injustice visible on the surface, but because the bank involved is a co conspirator with the FED to profit even further at taxpayer expense. That would be, as you by now rightly assume, the Bank of America.

From theburningplatform.com Good article:       (click) BOA is a Burning Ticking Time Bomb

So… after screwing the Federal Government and every single citizen for a $25 billion share of the TARP bailout…  and after that bailout money additionally profited them ten times the amount of the bailout (they can loan ten times their cash reserves)… and after they will earn obscene usury (meaning excessive, in that they have no money actually at risk in the loans as they are made out of thin air) interest on all those loans for decades to come… and yet are further conspiring with the FED to dump even more faulty (read bogus) derivatives from Bank liability sheets (and guess who will pay for that in a ‘round two TARP bailout‘?), they still want to steal $500 from a dead woman and her heirs?

If none of the above makes any sense, please see the earlier post, The Federal Reserve, an Appearance of the Fourth Kind, and this story (The Federal Reserve and Bank of America Initiate a Coup to Dump Billions of Dollars of Losses on the American Taxpayer). I think you will then find the following story doubly abhorrent:

This is a true accounting of an actual incident I’ve verified underway in Oregon with Bank of America, but it is presumed all large banks have similar policies and procedures in place. I am open to correction by anyone who knows otherwise regarding any specific bank. What follows is a description of various devious methods applied to siphon off extra money from the accounts of deceased persons when the survivors are of ultra-low income. Actually, the matter would also seem to include an almost conspiratorial partnership with County agencies, at least in this case, so this article could have been entitled, How Banks and Counties Conspire to Rob the Dead and the Poor.

To explain the rip off, we need first to have a basic grasp of how it things should transpire according to law. But to be clear, there is no violation of law yet visible, though violation of fiduciary responsibilities, user agreements, and moral ethics is still an issue. While laws vary in detail from State to State, the following simplified description is generally accurate.

When someone dies, there is either a Will which establishes an Executor of the Estate, or there is not. When there is not, the matter goes into Probate Court and the State determines the final resolution of the Estate. Where there is an Executor, that person is charged with closing all accounts of the deceased, liquidating any property not a specified gift in the Will, distribution of such inheritances, and paying of remaining debts. There will almost always be some funds involved, either from actual cash or bank deposits, or the sale of personal goods or property.

An Executor, often a family member who is also an heir, will be entitled to reasonable compensation for their services which comes from such funds. Such fees are commonly well over $1,000, plus expenses. This and any taxes owed are the only charges against such funds which have ultimate priority for ‘first-payee’ status.  Next come creditors, who must be paid in full or, where there are insufficient funds, be paid a pro rated share according to the size of the individual debts involved. Any remaining funds become inheritance, and may be subject to income taxes after the fact.

In a large estate, which in most legal definitions involves Real Property (real estate) or other assets worth more than some specified sum (the lowest I’ve seen is $250,000, but the sum for the State of Oregon I’m told is $2.5M), there are some fairly stringent procedures involving the Court which must be followed. But this does not apply to the poor, does it?

Think of the millions of elderly in nursing homes, for instance. They tend to own no property of consequence, and upon their death, most personal possessions consist of brick-a-brack, polyester clothes from the 60s,  a TV, and some personal things such as photos and keepsakes. They tend to have some money resources, but often quite minimal in nature. Often, the Executor named and heirs are also poor, or they might have had a nicer place to live out their last days. Such is the case in the Oregon example:

Blindness did not stop Wordy Mae from trying to bring beauty into the World

We are talking about a woman named Wordy Mae, last name omitted for cause. She was 87, legally blind, had Diabetes and several other troublesome ailments, and an income of $1,100 a month, of which all but $150 went to pay for her nursing home. Medicine  and personal care came out of the $150. Hers was a good Southern name, one especially common to Blacks and poor rural whites a few generations ago. She died with debts of several thousand but only about $500 in her checking account. Her personal things, other than keepsakes, had no resale value and all went to Goodwill.

Check out her artwork, right, one of her unique keepsakes. Though blind, she would spend countless hours hunched over with a heavy illuminated high-power magnifier and see the color sparkles well enough to glue bits of junk jewelry and plastic into artistic patterns.

So, the big question: did her family or the Executor get anything  at all? No. The Bank of America is usurping it with clever ploys.

Wordy’s Son was her named Executor.  He has three school-age daughters, also named heirs, but it looks like they will not see a penny, not even to recoup expenses as provided by law. This is unfortunate, because he is unemployable due to a disability for which he has no income allowance (why it should take more than eight years to get official disability is yet another rip-off article which should perhaps be written). He lives on about $1,000 a month Social Security from forced early retirement — which in and of itself cost nearly $400 a month in lost income from his full entitlement.

So we are talking about a family that has to choose between food or gasoline perhaps twice a month, and as result frequently has a diet of hot dogs for lunch and dinner, or Raman noodles every day, often skipping a meal altogether. It took nearly six weeks to come by enough money to buy an ink cartridge so he could write (futile) letters seeking resolution.  This is also a family, by the way, which had lost their home in the Mortgage crunch during our recent financial debacle which resulted in the banks being paid billions of dollars in the first place. So they are doubly upset with Bank of America, which played a role in that fiasco, as well.

Here is exactly how Bank of America has managed to steal from them further:

Step one: the Bank somehow knew immediately about the death. Well before Wordy’s Son could notify them, the Bank notified him that the account had been closed ‘for protection of the funds.’ One wonders how the bank was notified so quickly,  by whom, and how they knew which bank to notify. I’m working on a possible future blog, Banks Own Your Social Security Number and NAME, for one possible answer.

Step two: the Bank sent him a form to be filled out by the Executor. The seeming purpose of the form was  to let the bank know how the Estate would be handled. Reasonable… but it redirects correspondence to a centralized and dedicated department of the Bank out of State. No one local to deal with, providing a mechanism for delays which prove valuable to the Bank, as we shall see.

Step three: delay and silence.  Bank statements stop being issued, which seems to make sense, given the account was closed. There is no reply from the special department… though non was particularly expected, except that when the form was mailed, the Executor also sent a copy of the Death Certificate and a final accounting of the Estate, with request of release of the funds to cover Executor fees and his expenses in closing the Estate, which were not inconsequential and which had been difficult to manage without personal hardships. There were not even sufficient funds in the closed account to cover this, so all of Wordy’s funds should have gone to him, calling it inheritance or fees as you please. There were zero taxes due.

Step four: two months later, the special department then sent a letter stating that it was prepared to release the funds but was requiring an original copy, not a certified copy, of a County Court document before they could so proceed. Curiously, they did not specify the nature or name of the document requested. Because they did not, and the Oregon Revised Statutes made no reference to any legal requirement for any such document, the Executor contacted the County in an attempt to learn what was required and how to go about it.

Step five: The County did not respond. Repeated inquiries went unanswered for weeks. Eventually, it was discovered that there was a simple form, not much different than already provided the bank in purpose and content. There was associated with it an outrageous filing fee of $112.00 as well as other fees. This was to cover the cost of… well, ‘filing it’ in a filing cabinet. It was not possible to obtain the original, but only to obtain a certified copy. WTF?

Step six: about this same time, the Bank resumed mailing monthly statements. SURPRISE! The ‘no-fee’ checking account which had been closed was now enjoying a $12 a month service charge for… NOTHING. Perhaps the Bank has a filing cabinet to pay for, too?

Step seven: because the Executor could not possibly afford the filing fees, much less obtain an original copy at any price, it seems the Bank will therefore never have a legal obligation (we would presume that their ultimate argument) to release the funds, and will slowly absorb them until they are absorbed entirely through arbitrary monthly fees — which we might presume will be used to fatten Bank Executive Bonus Checks.

It is stories like this, including some personal experiences, which caused me to close my accounts with Wells Fargo and Bank of America when the 99% suggested it was one way to confront the System. I’d go further if I had the bravado and skills… and become a modern-day Robin Hood — and I thought for a moment I could avoid getting caught (I’d not be very good with a bow and arrow against the FBI). But that’s just my anger talking.

Image from reportyourcomplaint.com, where other BOA customers have their own issues to talk about (click)

If if moves you to sufficient anger to close your account, tell them Wordy Mae sent you. If you feel compelled to send a buck or two to Wordy’s heirs, send it by PayPal to wordymaeheirs at century link net, an addy I’ve established for the purpose.

I’ll match every dollar contributed from my book sales profits for this year. I’m thinking it might change their diet for a while. And if enough people did that, it would make news, and that would further embarrass the System toward useful redress for all who might be in similar difficulties with Banks and local County governments, which are really for-profit corporations in their own right (look yours up in Dunn and Bradstreet if you don’t believe me).

I also suggest you tweet/repost/email this post far and wide. I am lifting all copyrights upon it if reproduced in full unedited, links in tact, but would appreciate an adviso of any such reproduction in the form of a comment to this post. Appreciate you!

Related articles

• The Federal Reserve: an Appearance of the Fourth Kind (proparanoid.wordpress.com)
• Estate planning: Taking care of your executor (business.financialpost.com)
• Bank of America’s $40 Billion Mistake – WSJ.com (raptureimminent.wordpress.com)
• The Many Ways Banks Commit Criminal Fraud (americankabuki.blogspot.com)
• Bank of America: Too Crooked To Fail (drx.typepad.com)
• Bank of America slapped with $300k sanction (setexasrecord.com)