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Ponzi Nation: How Get-Rich-Quick Crime Came to Define an Era
Welcome to America, Sucker
Every great American boom and bust makes and breaks its share of crooks. The past decade -- call it the Ponzi Era -- has been no different, except for the gargantuan scale of white-collar crime. A vast wave of financial fraud swelled in the first years of the new century. Then, in 2008, with the subprime mortgage collapse, it crashed on the shore as a full-scale global economic meltdown. As that wave receded, it left hundreds of Ponzi and pyramid schemes, as well as other get-rich-quick rackets that helped fuel our recent economic frenzy, flopping on the beach.
The high-water marks from that crime wave, those places where the corruption reached its zenith, are still visible today, like the 17th floor of 885 Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan, the nerve center of investment firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities -- and, as it turned out, a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest in history. Or Stanfordville, a sprawling compound on the Caribbean island of Antigua named for its wealthy owner, a garrulous Texan named Allen Stanford who built it with funds from his own $8 billion Ponzi scheme. Or the bizarrely fortified law office -- security cards, surveillance cameras, hidden microphones, a private elevator -- of Florida attorney Scott Rothstein, who duped friends and investors out of $1.2 billion.
The more typical marks of the Ponzi Era, though, aren't as easy to see. Williamston, Michigan, for instance, lacks towering skyscrapers, Italian sports cars, million-dollar mansions, and massive security systems. A quiet town 15 miles from Lansing, the state capital, Williamston is little more than a cross-hatching of a dozen or so streets. A "DOLLAR TIME$" store sits near Williamston's main intersection -- locals affectionally call it the "four corners" -- and its main drag is lined with worn brick buildings passed on from one business to the next like fading, hand-me-down jeans. It's here, far from New York or Antigua, that thanks to two brothers seized by a financial fever dream, the Ponzi Era made its truest, deepest American mark.
Jay and Eric Merkle, active church members and successful local businessmen, were well known among Williamston's residents. In 2004, the brothers discovered that an oil-and-gas venture, which they had invested in and which promised them quick, lucrative returns, was a scam. They'd been duped. Their next move should have been simple: turn in the crooks and get on with their lives, their pockets a few dollars lighter. Jay and Eric, however, grasped the spirit of their age and made another decision entirely -- they teamed up with the guys who had ripped them off, in the process switching from prey to predator.
That first venture actually floundered, but in 2005, court records show, they started their own Ponzi scheme, Platinum Business Industries (PBI). Based in Williamston, PBI claimed it was socking its investors' money into lucrative oil and gas exploration opportunities in Oklahoma and Texas, and it promised the investors absurdly high returns -- 6% a month, or 72% a year. Despite such promises, the brothers assured town locals handing over their hard-earned dollars that little risk was involved. Even if the energy exploration didn't pay off, the land acquired by PBI was valuable and could be sold to offset any losses.
Like Madoff in Palm Beach, the Merkles in Williamston exploited local ties -- church and family -- to reel in new investors; and like Madoff's investment fund, PBI, too, was a complete sham, and a classic Ponzi scheme -- that is, an investment scam in which existing investors' returns are paid for with money from new investors. In the case of PBI, there was no energy exploration in Oklahoma and Texas.
Some of the money they received from later investors the Merkles used to pay off earlier ones and give their scheme the look of success. But in their case, there was a rub. The Merkles were distinctly creatures of the Ponzi Era: they evidently couldn't help themselves. Even as they ran their own Ponzi racket, documents show, they were getting fleeced. What they weren't paying out in fake returns the Merkles bet on high-yield, get-rich-quick schemes in the U.S. and abroad that had nothing to do with oil and gas -- and other Ponzi schemers and con artists were robbing them blind.
Their financial crime spree collapsed in 2008. Dead-broke, with investigators closing in, they told investors that various foreign governments and banks had frozen their assets. The brothers then asked them to wire more than a million dollars to Nigeria, Ghana, and other countries as "fees" to release their money, even as they warned them against cooperating with an FBI investigation. Then, on a brisk autumn day in October 2008, the feds arrested to the two brothers; the game was up. In all, via PBI and other scams, they had duped more than 600 investors out of $50 million, robbing some of their life savings.
When compared to Madoff's or Stanford's heists, that sum was little more than pocket change. But the Merkle brothers caught the true, democratic spirit of a decade of an unrestrained magical thinking that infected rich and poor, successful and ne'er-do-well, the financially savvy and neophytes who couldn't tell a stock from a bond. Think of their story as a parable for the Ponzi Era: they were taken, decided to become takers, took others, then got taken again. In the rush for the pot of gold at rainbow's end, they bet everything Main Street had to offer, believing they could get away with it.
Thanks to an open credit spigot, a booming housing market, and visions of unimaginable wealth on Wall Street, practically everyone in the United States in the past decade seemed to aspire to get rich -- and quick. Perfectly ordinary people refinanced their homes, refinanced again, and used the money they got to stake themselves at the crooked casino table of American life. Some rolled the dice in stocks, bonds, and second homes. For millions more, the gamble took the form of "investment opportunities" that promised wealth in a hurry, opportunities now exposed as little more than financial con jobs. "People were shooting for that home run," says Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University and white-collar crime expert. "They were saying, ‘I'm just as smart as Warren Buffet.'"
Today, with easy credit and the buy-now-pay-tomorrow culture that it spawned in the dustbin of history, the Ponzis and pyramid schemes of the past decade can be seen for what they really were. Not a week seems to go by without the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the FBI or law enforcement officials busting another get-rich hustle. Yet the full scope of the criminality of the Ponzi Era remains elusive; no one yet knows just how widespread those Ponzi schemes were -- and how many may remain, hidden or in plain sight.
Beyond the headliners like Madoff and Stanford, Americans may not actually be aware of just how many schemes of this sort were abroad in our land -- but it probably doesn't matter much either. Disillusionment with the past decade is such that many Americans now simply assume that our world is little but a giant Ponzi scheme.
Ponzis, Ponzis, Everywhere
The wave of financial crime may have peaked in 2005 or 2006, but the detritus of such collapsed schemes has left regulators and investigators ever busier. Almost four times as many Ponzi schemes broke down in 2009 -- 150 -- as in 2008 -- 40. According to the Associated Press, the FBI began more than 2,100 securities fraud cases last year, an increase from 1,750 the year before. The SEC likewise dealt out 82% more restraining orders against Ponzi schemes and similar frauds in 2009 than the previous year.
2008 belonged to Madoff, but 2009 and 2010 have displayed a far more eclectic cast of crooks. We learned of mini Madoff, Miami Madoff, and Montreal Madoff, of Ponzis targeting African Americans, Haitian Americans, and Cuban Americans. There were fraudulent real-estate schemes and farm-grain schemes. Some were banal, like a Ponzi built on investments in state-worker uniforms or one that siphoned off retirement funds from bus drivers. Others were sexier, like the high-profile Florida race-car driver who, investigators say, swindled investors for $5 million claiming to peddle iron-ore contracts, or the clutch of professional athletes, among them the National Football League's Michael Vick, allegedly fleeced for $3 million by an elite "adviser" offering guidance on buying luxury properties and private jets. There were Ponzis piled atop each other, like a recent Detroit scam described by a state official as "a multiheaded Ponzi hydra."
Faltering Ponzis have spread woe in Dallas and Boca Raton, Livermore and Long Island, Seattle and Atlanta. And the legacy of the past decade's procession of white-collar criminals has indelibly marked our society in ways that go far beyond the financial losses they caused to their unfortunate investors.
Just use the word "Madoff" and see if you don't inspire a visceral sense of revulsion in your listeners. (So notorious is the name that Bernie's daughter-in-law wants to legally change her daughter's last name from Madoff to Morgan to avoid "additional humiliation.") Indeed, the Ponzi scheme is now so imprinted on the American imagination that it has, to some extent, become a prism through which we interpret the world.
The World's a Ponzi, and We're All Getting Duped
A decade ago, few Americans would have described the world around them in Ponzi terms, if they even knew what it was. Today, it's become increasingly commonplace to describe American politics as a series of massive, plain-as-day Ponzi schemes. Medicare, for instance, or Social Security are regularly deemed Ponzis by right-wing protestors railing against the spread of big government. "It's become part of the political nomenclature," says law professor Henning. "That may be the greatest effect Madoff had. He's now taken a term of art and made it into common public discourse."
Last month, for instance, Tim Pawlenty, the drawling Minnesota governor and potential Republican presidential candidate, described not just Social Security and Medicare but all federal government spending as the "Ponzi scheme on the Potomac." That scheme, Pawlenty wrote, "sooner or later" will
"come crashing down, and the loss will be mammoth... Ponzi schemes succeed because people want to believe in a free lunch as long as the easy money is rolling in. But a day of reckoning always arrives, and ours is right around the corner. The sooner we open our eyes, the sooner we can clean up this mess."
The inexorable rise of our closest economic competitor, China, is apparently a massive Ponzi, too. According to some journalists and analysts, that country's success has been built on a bloated stock market, a growing housing bubble, cheap labor, and the promise of increasing returns. If so, it's undoubtedly the greatest heist ever pulled in plain sight, involving the duping of China's billion-plus inhabitants and the billions more worldwide whose lifestyles wouldn't exist without the Middle Kingdom's industrial rise.
To some, the Ponzi scheme knows no borders at all. Joe Romm, a climate science expert and blogger at ClimateProgress.org -- a left-leaning website, since the Ponzi mindset is bipartisan -- casts our current climate nightmare as a global Ponzi. By devouring natural resources now and cavalierly spewing greenhouse gases to poison the planet's future, Romm says, we're mortgaging the lives of future generations:
"You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior. But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate...'"
What does it mean that we so eagerly slap the label "Ponzi scheme" on those things that most frustrate, infuriate, or confound us? Why do so many Americans feel like hapless investors who have thrown away their life savings to pay off guys at the top whose only goal is to screw over everybody else?
It's an unmistakable sign, at the very least, of a deep, simmering distrust and disillusionment, a dark undercurrent of despair spreading through our culture, whether voiced by Governor Pawlenty or a newspaper reader in rural Ohio who wrote in a letter to the editor that Social Security "is, by definition, a Ponzi scheme." Today, for Americans, the literal Ponzi schemers may be the least of it. Sooner or later, they usually go to jail. But the distrust they sparked has made its way to the very kings of finance, who, like the Ponzi-schemers, were not so long ago going to make us all rich, who struck the match and then stoked the flames of the financial crisis, who created oblique financial products like collateralized debt obligations and pick-a-pay subprime mortgages, and then walked away unscathed with multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses in their pockets.
The distrust extends as well to the government that finally jailed Madoff and is prosecuting Stanford, but has dealt a free pass to Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers. What might be thought of as an American Ponzi mood can be seen in the rise of anti-government groups like the burgeoning Tea Party movement. The scattered "patriot" groups that comprise the Tea Partiers passionately claim the president, the Democrats, and even the Republicans are "stealing" their country and liberty from them; in some cases, they are prepared to take up arms against what they see as fraud of the largest order, which they term "socialist tyranny."
Most disquieting in the Ponzi Era is the disillusionment it has bred, the sense that people you know or work with could be ripping you off. In Bernie Madoff's case, there's a possibility he deceived his own wife and children. The Merkle brothers exploited members of their church and extended family. "You work hard your whole life to be smart with your money and save and then it is taken by someone you know," said a resident of tiny Van Wert, Ohio, who'd been duped by the Merkles. "People need to be warned that it can happen in Van Wert, too."
How long it will take for that embedded distrust to dissipate is anyone's guess. As the victims of Madoff can attest, justice is bittersweet in the wake of a Ponzi scheme: the ringleader may spend his life in prison, his belongings publicly auctioned off as a form of catharsis as much as restitution, but investors are rarely made whole again. The scars remain.
Ours is now a Ponzi nation. There is a new mood in the land. Just how it will play out is unknown, but a sense of having been conned is still spreading -- as if not just surprising numbers of investors, but the whole country had experienced the last days of a giant Ponzi scheme. With it goes a feeling that what we've been living through, even in "the best of times," wasn't an American dream, but pure nightmare. Welcome to America, sucker.
46 Comments so far
Show AllLife is a Ponzi scheme, you keep putting yourself into it, just to have death crash the party. The lesser ponzis are inevitable in a corporate capitalistic consumer culture where the American Dream has been commercialized. People play the horses, fill casinos, bet the food money on lottery tickets, and pay out their last dollars to get-rich-quick schemes by the hundreds. Age doesn't bring wisdom here, the elderly are the prime target for con-men.
The only cure is to tear down the system and rebuild it for the benefit of humans -- not large corporations and the super-rich.
And that will take a revolution.
Gary
"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."
-- John Adams
Yep.
The only question is whether it will be peaceful.
The police state is here. The major-party conventions' security tactics (and Otoma's claim that he can have anyone killed, tortured, disappeared based on executive say-so, "fusion" centers, etc...
Point is, even passive resistance will be met with excessive (albeit supposedly non-lethal) force. If we're goaded into violence--which seems to be the goal--then the clampdown can come completely into the open.
Then real change will occur, but only after things change horribly for the worst.
Hope I'm wrong, and hope you're wrong too.
Cheers.
I suppose by "Otama" you mean Obama. I don't know about Obama having people killed, etc on executive say so but seems to me the man can't tell political enemies to go f*** themselves when such would be appropriate.
Truth is presidents have probably had the power to have certain people bumped off since at least the beginning of the cold war. Question is does an individual president have the wisdom, morality and restraint to use such power only when there is no other choice. As I said Obama seems to have the restraint as opposed to others who seemed to relish the prospect.
There was a story I read one time about how, upon entering the Oval Office for the first time after the inauguration, the new President is presented with an envelope and told he can have any one person killed if he puts that name into the envelope.
Nowadays he just orders his drone pilots to take out so-and-so terrorists and don't worry about "collateral damage." Or he puts an American discontent on an assassination list.
Gary
"Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage."
-- Jean Anouilh
Otoma.
Should be obvious what that means. If not, a cursory review of Civil-War lit will fix you right up.
And as to his claim he can kill anyone just by declaring them a meanie, now you know:
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/power-assassinate-american-citizens
Read and weep.
Weep for your country, cause she's dead. Worse.
She's undead, and exists solely to eat our souls.
The Ponzi Scheme framework looks at money and other indicia of stored and promised wealth. What actually backs up these placeholders and promises of wealth is the expectation of infinite natural resources.
It is the physical world, and its limitations, that is the real delusional story. There is just so much oil, natural gas, and uranium. There is just so much copper, iron, trees, fish, and other natural resources. They are there until they are not. We cannot take them in a finite world and expect them not to decrease. To be proud of taking more of them every year as a sign of "growth" has been crazy. To think "God loves us" and favors because we are disposing of them faster than anyone else, even faster than ourselves, has been crazy. And stupid.
And now, we think the most important thing we can do is "maintain confidence." Not confidence that we can form communties again, but confidence that we can keep consuming somehow. Good luck with that.
"And now, we think the most important thing we can do is "maintain confidence." Not confidence that we can form communties again, but confidence that we can keep consuming somehow. Good luck with that."
People are desperate for news that the party can continue indefinitely. The rational among us know otherwise, but that doesn't change human behavior, as irrational as it can be.
I am working to reduce my consumption, and in turn, how much I need to earn. By doing so, I am paying less income and sales tax. Of course, I am also paying less FICA and Medicare taxes which impact current retired people.
I have absolutely no problem paying into a system that is supposed to spread the wealth and help those who need it. This is the foundation of a healthy society. However, we do not have a healthy society and I'll be damned if I'm going to keep playing this Ponzi game to keep funneling my life's energy up to a bunch of rich pigs.
Some maintain that we need a revolution, and I agree. I hope we can be smart enough to avert a bloody revolution by starting an economic revolution ourselves. One way or another, this house of cards is going to come down. My belief is that we can help it land softly. The alternative is too ugly to fathom.
"I'll be damned if I'm going to keep playing this Ponzi game to keep funneling my life's energy up to a bunch of rich pigs."
Seconded. But it took me too long to realizse that I was feeding the beast in ways that I could avoid. Spare the credit card and pay it of fully each month. Buy local. Grow as much of my own food that I can. Remember whenever you engage with the system, 15% of what you spend ends up in a billionaire's bank account.
Check out the CMKM/CMKX CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION. The SEC was apparently trading phantom shares in the company and are demanding over 3.4 trillion dollars. The MSM are not interested - operation mockingbird is still in full swing.
"Check out the CMKM/CMKX CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION. The SEC was apparently trading phantom shares in the company and are demanding over 3.4 trillion dollars. The MSM are not interested - operation mockingbird is still in full swing."
Yeah, but you know, this reminds me of the Einstein quote: "I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details."
I know enough details. While they serve to support what I know, and are interesting as such, my time is better spent working on what I know to be true, and also reaching out to others who want to actually do something with their lives.
I am now in the process of leading a study group around the book, Your Money or You Life. On the surface, it looks like a guide to financial independence/integrity. Scratch the surface, however, and it's really a guide to reclaiming our lives from the beast that is our current financial/economic system. This system is all-consuming, and it is in the process of consuming us.
So yeah, I agree: Pay down your debt, buy local, grow as much of your own food, join a co-op, do it yourself, make do, or do without. Most importantly, reclaim your lives and your sanity - not to mention your dignity!
The idea of Medicare as a Ponzi scheme would require that it first be billed as a financial investment. This alone shows how greedy and selfish these people are, that their minds literally cannot even comprehend that something has value without a monetary return, such as paying dues for the greater good.
The Killing Fields Of Tomorrow
Three Europeans (one, an English woman; one, a French woman; one, an Italian man), who lived through and survived the Second World War, traveled to the US afterwards and, eventually, settled in for lengthy stays at the San Francisco Arts Commission. (The Commission's Civic Design Committee has much more to do with architecture than it does with art.)
A nocturnal, arson fire, set directly in front of a recently installed fire door at 165 Grove Street, obliges the Arts Commission to relocate three times, bringing it in due course to the 8th floor at 3rd & Mission Streets, looking down on the Moscone Convention Center and arriving in ample time for the latter's Grand Opening.
The Italian gentleman surprises me by suggesting that I get myself fired from my job at the Arts Commission.
Time to leave.
I follow the Commission's English Director into her office to arrange for my departure. She leaves the door unlatched and, so, doesn't hear me when I open it. She is standing behind her desk. He arms are held out in front of her and her small hands are tightly fisted. Her head is turned to the side, her eyes are closed. Her face is grimaced in agony as she desperately wills herself to keep from crying out. Suddenly, she turns and sees me. A look of hatred and horror appears on her face. Then, right away, she takes on her normal demeanor as if nothing has happened. What she sees on my face are ... tears. You see, I'm an even better actor than she is. I tell my story and we arrange for me to be laid off. It must be hard on anyone to play one part in order to hide another.
Over a year after my skedaddle from the San Francisco Arts Commission, I meet the French woman in an unlikely place. I have just returned to the City and I suspect foreknowledge of my whereabouts on her part. Given the hour, the BART train in which I am riding (under ground) is sparsely occupied. For some reason, I look behind me, where I spot her prowling down the aisle of the next car in my direction. She arrives. She sits down beside me. I turn and look at the ashen melancholy of her face. I greet her in a friendly way, "Well, hi there, how are you?" (My immediate thought is: Do not mention the Arts Commission. I don't.) I then submit to a casual, probative interchange, after which we mutually bid adieu. I never see her again.
Read the newspapers for the week of the convention center's opening concerning the uproar caused by the controversial Moscone Bust. The murder of Mayor Moscone brought this bust into being. It was successfully used to deflect attention away from the building's ... architecture. A journalist was later prompted to write that "the designer of the Moscone Convention Center did not have human beings in mind." Oh, yes, he did.
Who hears me here, hears me there.
"We've indulged you long enough!"
Mary nodded in agreement, though she was distracted by the sound of the small waterfall in foyer. As he went on yammering her mind wandered to what her father's tie looked like in the casket. 'What were we thinking,' she wondered, 'when we chose that tie?'
The sound of the car pulling into the drive drew their attention and they unconsciously turned their heads in unison. For the moment there was silence.
With the sound of the car door slamming everyone heard everything everywhere.
Just because some right-wing noisemakers call Medicare and Social Security Ponzi Schemes hardly makes such a ridiculous characterization TRUE!!.....While Ponzi Scheme corruption highlights too much of Wall Street activity since 1990s,this article is truly overkill!!! Why not focus more on Congressional regulatory legislation that has YET to see the light of day! This piece is a colossal, sensationalist downer without any hopefully solutionist viewpoint.
I think the solution to this is public financing of campaigns, which will make DC more responsive to Main Street, and less responsive to Wall Street. In the last ten years, our congressmen, wholely owned subsidiaries of Wall Street and other large dollar donors, relaxed regulation everywhere, and called the SEC cops off the beat. The result is the carnage of a million Ponzi schemes we see around us. And we're ALL getting suckered by the biggest of these flimflam men.
Reclaim our democracy, or Ponzi America will continue, because its the America the power elite WANT, and in our current sham of a democracy, the power elite GET what they WANT. What YOU get, is a well paid TV commercial every four years, reminding you that your Congressmen has a flag while his opponent consorts with terrorists. Thats what YOU get.
fixcongressfirst.org
There is much sanity in the posts below ...
I do not relish the prospect of collapse as an inadvertant means of cleansing all the bad money and greed from system - societal collapse is just another cell in their decision matrix.
Collapse may be inevitable, but in my mind it does not necessarily mean that we the people will be left standing with pitchforks held high when the dust clears.
Merely by our existence, we have become an annoyance to the super-rich.
It is my belief that the ruling class has been working overtime for the past 50 years to concoct an assortment of counter-measures - military and political in nature, designed to invalidate all of history's lessons - the lessons we the people find comfort in during times like these.
Collapse is a very real outcome to these people - and they are probably already poised for it.
Collapse is not in their game. They will declare Marshall law and control everything openly just like they do now but covertly. They need their slaves.
12 Billion slaves c'mon who wants to feed 12 Billion Slaves. Easier to thin the herds first.
Thats why they still need 200 thousand nuclear warheads. just herd'em into valleys, no muss no fuss just glowing dust.
"Where" instead of "wear"; "Marshall" instead of "martial"?? CD'er are slipping. What's happening to they're brains?
"they're?"
Do you guys where tin foil hats, too?
No, man, but then, aluminum has not yet steeped their brains to the point where they can't tell the difference between "where" and "wear."
I didn't use the "C-word" (conspriracy), but you'd be wise to stop sneering every time you hear it - truth is, that's the way the world is governed.
Replace Uncle Sam with Charles Ponzi wearing a red, white and blue top hat. Festoon him with guns and bandoliers of ammunition. Have some dead, dismembered Muslims sprawled at his feet. There you have the United States.
Excellent article. The Ponzi Decade. I like that. But I wish people would realize that the biggest ponzi scheme of all is the federal government's deficits. This is bigger than all of the others combined. Much, much bigger. The massive interest payments (in the hundreds of billions already, and soon to be in the trillions) amount to a massive transfer of money from the pockets of working people to the pockets of the rich. And it will go on forever and ever. And they're telling us that if we borrow this money that it will cause the economy to grow and then we'll be able to pay it back. That's classic Ponzi thinking: we'll be able to pay back the early investors with returns from later profits. But there's no way it can work. No possible way. It's a scam, maybe the biggest scam in human history. Many, many trillions of dollars.
I heard there are now around 2000 billionaires in the world versus 800 last year. Shit like that doesn't happen on accident.
Well, KJ, by all means, don't let any facts get in the way of anything you post! I propose you post ALL the rumors you here in Fairyland.
Do you have anything to say regarding the article and the points made or do you just take joy in making fun of the people here?
Are you talking to KJ?
It's a simple equation, More Poor People = more Rich People. as long as there are victims there are preditors
It's just natural
So, the option is violent revolution or leave?
public financing of campaigns (fixcongressfirst.org)
and government subsidization of the press (about $30 billion/year, as was done in this nations early history and is still done in England and Scandanavia).
But the second will never be done until the public stands up and pushes united and unequivocably for the first.
How about a non-violent revolution?
Has that ever worked really. Because the closest I've ever seen it the American Revloution where Brition was too far away to really crush the colonies and simply had to give up after a relitivly short police action.
and by leave you mean the Planet? or the Solar System?.
Because there are plenty of resourses in the Solar System, Enough for everybody till the Sun dies in a billion years or so.
Then we'll need a new Star System anyway. Because it's how we grew up and the way we like to live.
Actually the entire worlds economy is a gigantic Ponzi scheme. It is based on infinite growth on a finite planet. That can't happen, growth can NOT go on for ever. At some point somebody is going to get stuck holding the bag, so to speak.
And the way things are going, I wonder if that somebody might be us...
This is just the latest in a series of Ponzi Decades, starting and associated with Friedman's Chicago Boys economics becoming dogma in the late 1970s. It's very unfortunate the writer didn't include this context because it marks the beginning of what is truely a massive ponzi scheme, as some have pointed-out.
Is China a ponzi scheme? Not in the same manner as the USA's financial mortgaging of the future to pay for the present. Ecologically, yes; but that goes for the whole Capitalist-driven World System. It has already begun to unravel at a slow pace that can only gain momentum as further limits to growth are reached. I suggest buying land capable of becoming a farm, thus turning the phrase "Bought the farm" on its head.
In tandem with this article, I highly suggest this, "Decoding The Language Of Social Control" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24966.htm as it too points to Reagan as the source of our troubles, while digging other ground that's just as fertile.
Capitalism is Ponzi by design.
PERFECT STATEMENT
Please, if someone is promising you returns of 72 percent per annum, and you don't run away as fast as you can, it is your own damn fault. Don't make excuses and pretend that you didn't know that the guys offering you 72 percent returns were cheats. You knew. People who invest money into a 72 percent per annum scheme do so knowing that there is under the table, illegal stuff going on. They are just dumb enough to think that they are going to benefit from the illegal stuff that is going on.
Ponzi schemes have always been in the very interstices of america.
behind the "we are industrious and the hardest working people on earth" is really a "get rich QUICK" before life goes away ...hey - get rich BY the time we're ready to have babies ..hey get rich FASTER than the other guy...hey get richER , FASTER,
from THIS comes "work harder" ...not the other way around.
the moment america was "discovered" by the europeans - it was a GET RICH - and then GET RICH QUICK nation. even the "hard work" to "conquer the land" was really - considering this was done in the space of a mere 250 years - really ANOTHER "get rich quick" scheme ..regardless of what the different "flags" and banners it came under......
and THAT"s the biggest "get rich quick" Ponzi scheme of all.
after all -- everyone knows america was just STOLEN from native indians -- quite QUICKLY in fact....
and that's WEALTH that is based on value that was NOT REALLY EARNED.. at least most of it, but only if one SUBTRACTS the part where the theft was more direct....
so - to wit -- what is america?
I always had the opinion that IT
itself - IS ONE BIG PONZI SCHEME.
it even includes the SCAM of "democracy" Fronting for the SCHEME - the most GIGANTIC PONZI scheme of them all - CAPITALISM - the most "american" of american traits.
put those together -with its history from day "one" of "discovery" - to today's Wall Street "products" - to the ordinary american "way of life" of DREAMING BIG TO GET RICH because "we're ALL so deserving because we are americans and this is our RIGHT - to be richer than anyone on earth and our capitalism and "FREEDOM" makes sure this is so"
and what do you really have?
ONE NATION - PONZI SCHEME .
heck even its Power and WEalth beyond measure of all others is -- based on UNPAID debts to other nations and peoples and its a continuing scheme....
even its PRINTING of Money is a PONZI scheme of sorts NEVER INTENDED to be repayed :
as in "we print the dollars - and it's YOUR problem".
THAT - in short sums up .......America.
but -- i guess even Ponzi schemers can get caught in their own traps, isn't it? and THAT"s when the "members of the family" of "money gangsters and racketeers ALL IN SERVICE to OUR BIG BOSS: our Supernationalistic Capitalism" (Smedley Butler, US marines) ..innocent or not - wake up to the AWFUL, AWFUL reality that their OWN "great country" the GLORIOUS BEACON and SHINING LIGHT of "fairness, justice, and liberty"
was , and has been , and is -- all along
ONE GIANT PONZI SCHEME.
it's a "family" in only one real way -- EVERYONE IN IT is involved, one way or another - in the BIG PONZI SCHEME that it really is... from day one when the europeans declared the land THEIRS - to the seconds we are counting today.
someone once told me about the USA - when I was new -
"welcome....but I wanna tell you -- don't believe that this is a country of democracy and freedom and justice and fairness and truth...it's none of those things. they're just a mask....i'm american....but tell you the truth -- this is not a country...it's a just a PLACE where the GOD is the Almighty DOLLAR..it's just a .......place".
I never forgot that long-ago comment by a nice american fellow.
Henry CK Liu -- the asiatimesonline writer said it well in some way , regarding the Monetary "dollar hegemony" on which rests the US Power ....a kind of "ponzi scheme" in itself based on nothing but the PERCEPTION that america can stand by its OBLIGATIONS and DEBTS (even if its policies have been designed to make OTHER countries services THE USA'S DEBTS and in effect enslave THEM to american "wealth making" that is based on rigging the books and rules) ....
He put it well:
"THE USA has gotten away with what is really an UNEARNED and UNJUSTIFIED dominance ...".
i've always thought death was a "snap"....it's living that requires the courage....look up giles corey.....all my heroes die from too much weight...peace
sierra7
Somehow, every writer has to throw in Social Security as a "free lunch" program.
IT IS NOT A FREE LUNCH PROGRAM; WE PAY INTO THE SYSTEM WITH EXPECTANT MARKET RETURNS YEARS LATER.
SO STOP, WILL YOU?
Anyone interested in 'getting rich' - whether quick or otherwise - should immediately invest in a good therapist and find out what's REALLY wrong with him/her. Greed is a vice - immoral. Having more than you need for you and your family to survive and live a decent life is IMMORAL - just plain wrong. Like having more than two children - the consequences for all are a bitch.
This is indeed a finite planet - but EVIL is infinite. And humans are capable of unbelievable evil - especially when they feel cornered. You won't feel so cornered - and insecure - if you don't take more than you need and if you develop good relations with other such people. The psychopaths will always be among us - we have to figure out a way to keep them from harming the rest of society, intead of electing them to govern us !!! (If we take care of those sociopaths, we won't have the 'poor among us' to worry about - everyone will share.) And I don't mean communism - I still believe in capitalism for 'luxuries' - for those who work harder and longer at miserable jobs. And I believe in a fair and just society - a meritocracy. (It worked for some of the native tribes before the European psychopaths invaded.) But the 'common good' must take precedence if we are to survive as a species - and we can't survive unless this planet (including other major species) survives.
Looks for hints on how to 'do it right' in the Scandinavian countries - then improve on their model... research the 'civilized' NA tribal governments as well...
This is a good piece Andy, except that someone needs to defend Social Security. It may now be like a Ponzi scheme, but originally it was to be a forced insurance program for old age. We all pay our premiums with the help of our employer, and when we reach retirement age we reap the benefits -- a monthly check for life. It is handled much like insurance companies handle life insurance, except that the government puts the money into the general fund and spends it rather than investing it in interest bearing bonds. That's not ponzi, but it may be theft. It is certainly not good business and won't work. It also falsely inflates the GDP.
"...someone needs to defend Social Security."
NO-one... needs to DEFEND SS...
SOLVENT - let me repeat -S - O - L - V - E - N - T - LIKE in the BLACK -
***until 2047***
at which time it will still be capable of 85% of promised benefits.
regardless of what Pete Peterson... Dick Army... and yes... Barak Obama... are repeating over and over and over more frequently...
SS projects on a 75 year or inifinty time horizon - by law - so THAT small fact seems to be left out...
yes... my friend... SSN DOES need us to repeat back against the rhetoric...
next time you hear your friends say SSN is in "crisis"... say... "you are incorrect"... SSN's own data does not.
When you say that Social Security will be solvent until 2047, are you counting those "special bonds" the government uses to replace the money paid in by taxpayers when it takes their SS money and spends it on bombs and invasions and occupations? Because, if you are, I'd like to know where the funds will come from to redeem those "special bonds".