Tag: stealing

Charge It….

Guest Post by Eric Peters

In “Third World” countries – the ones Americans take comfort in making fun of – they just take your money.ERAD lead

The cops, I mean.

No pretext, just hand it over.

And now, here.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol is using a gadget called an Electronic Recovery and Access to Data Machine (ERAD – god, how the state’s thugs love their acronyms) to simply vacuum whatever money you happen to have in your bank account or on a prepaid gift card. The machine accesses your account – basically, like a card reader at the cashier of any store/restaurant where you just bought something – and takes it.

All of it.

Without your having “bought” anything.

Much less having been convicted of committing a crime.hero thug 2

These thugs – literally, in the historic sense (see here about the infamous Thuggee Cult of India) simply  steal whatever they wish, using threats of lethal reprisal to assure the cooperation of their victims, who are legally forbidden to defend themselves.

This is an outrage for which there are no words.

Screams are the only appropriate response.

And, perhaps, something more.

It may be time for that – god help us.

Mind, there is no conviction – or even accusation. Merely the thug-in-costume’s assertion that you – his victim – seemed (to him!) to be behaving “peculiarly.” Because no reasonable person would ever feel the slightest bit nervous and defensive, having just been waylaid by an armed thug with the legal power to simply strip him of his possessions and possibly his life, if he objects  in any way.

Continue reading “Charge It….”

Are You Guilty of Crimes Against the Young?

Guest Post by

The New Land of Opportunity

“This city is great. It’s beautiful. It’s cheap. The climate is agreeable. And it’s becoming a haven for Internet savvy marketers.

“I think they’re coming partly because it’s a great place to live. And I think young people want to get away from the U.S., too. It’s just not the land of opportunity that it used to be.”

So sayeth our dinner companion last night. He was the second young man in the last 24 hours to make the case that Medellín is a “buy.”

“It just seems to be catching on with people who work on the Internet. I guess because it is such a great place to live. People are helpful and nice here. And everything is unbelievably cheap.”

We can back him up on both points: Our taxi driver went far out of his way to help us find our hotel. (We had the wrong name.) And after driving us around for a half an hour, he was delighted to take the equivalent of $8 for the fare.

 

MedellinMedellín – city of the future

Photo via turismoenmedellin.com

 

A Country for Old Men

Several readers have commented on the coming generational storm in the U.S., which was the theme in last week’s Diary. (You can catch up  here, here, and here.)

 

“Billie Boy, I don’t like where your head is lately. Your writing depicts our debt situation as being caused by baby boomers when it is the Fed and the government who never listen or do what the public desires…”

 

Here’s another:

 

“You are beginning to sound like “Obuma” in his class warfare dialogue. I am one of those old people who is not benefiting from the greed and lack of morals evident on Wall Street and in particular in Washington, DC. Leave me out of it and do not blame all old people for the actions of the elites in DC and state governments…”

 

To clarify, we are not blaming innocent beneficiaries… or innocent victims. And we readily admit we couldn’t get a conviction for willful larceny. Most of the people involved stole unwittingly. They were just playing the piano; how could they know what was going on in the back room?

Continue reading “Are You Guilty of Crimes Against the Young?”

YOU ARE ALREADY BEING CYPRUSED, BECAUSE MATH IS HARD

The internet has been abuzz all week about the plan to steal money directly from bank depositors in Cyprus. The Eurocrats want to abscond with 3% to 15% of bank depositor cash as a bribe to keep from letting the Cyprus banks collapse under the weight of bad debt created by the policies of the Eurocrats. There is outrage among the critical thinking alternate media and yawns from the Larry Fink’s and Barry Ritholtz’ of the world who depend on muppets to keep investing with them. The MSM does their usual propaganda spiel about the FDIC backing up trillions in deposits with their $25 billion fund.

This could never happen in America. Right?

It has already happened and continues this very second. The ruling financial class are so supremely confident in your lack of math skills that they openly and blatantly steal money from your savings account every second of the day. They have been doing it since December 2008.

I take you back to the days of yesteryear – 2006 and 2007. In those pre-crisis days you could put your money in a Vanguard Money Market fund and earn a 5% return. Over this two year period, inflation averaged 3.2% according to our friends at the BLS. That means you were getting a REAL RETURN of 1.8%. Even if you don’t believe the BLS numbers, you weren’t losing by keeping money in a savings account.

Then the Wall Street/Federal Reserve created financial collapse occured in late 2008. In order to protect his owners on Wall Street, Helicopter Ben swooped in with free money for his boys in December 2008. He lowered the Federal Funds Rate to between 0% and .25% and has left the rate at this level to this day. You can see from the chart below that the last time the Fed dropped rates below 2% for a significant time period, they created the housing bubble. I wonder what 0% interest rates over 4.3 years will create?   

Now we get to the math. By lowering the Fed Fund Rate to near zero, Ben has thrown savers and senior citizens under the bus. For the last 4.3 years savers have been able to get a .15% return on their money. Over this same time frame the CPI has risen 10.4%.  Let’s put this into a real life example.

Suppose grandma has life savings of $100,000 that she needs to live off of to supplement her meager $13,000 of Social Security income. Back in 2007 she could earn $5,000 per year in interest to help her make ends meet. Since December 2008 she has been able to earn a total of $650 in interest at .15% rates. That means she would have $100,650 today.

But one problem. The 10.4% inflation has resulted in the $100,650 only having $90,200 of purchasing power today. This means that Ben Bernanke has already stolen 10% of your savings and handed it to his banker buddies. He is much more devious than the Eurocrats. They are being too transparent. Ben understands that our government run public school system matriculates functionally illiterate dullards into society and they will never figure out the beauty of inflationary stealing.

Of course it is much greater than the 10% calculated above. We know that true inflation is at least 2% greater than the BLS manipulated data. Therefore, the ruling class has actually stolen closer to 20% of your savings since December 2008.  

And the good news is that Bennie has absolutely no intention of raising the Federal Funds Rate for a few more years. By 2016 he will have stolen another 20% of your savings and no one will be protesting or rioting in the streets, because math is hard.

You’ve been CYPRUSED and didn’t even know it.