11/26/16

Wealthy in India are turning ‘Nigerian Prince Scam’ honest

By: John | New Zeal

Progressives have salivated for a “war on cash” ever since the invention of digital money. Allowing the populace to have possession of their finances is way too much freedom when compared to the digital form that must be stored in easily taxable banks. As reported and applauded by many news outlets, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modia has taken the first shots in the war by announcing that 500 and 1000 rupee notes would become worthless by the end of the year.

Owners of said bills have until then to either deposit the notes (and take a haircut if the amount seems suspicious to the government) or exchange up to the equivalent of $65 per day for other currency. To put this in perspective, these bills are the equivalent of $8 and $15 respectively and account for 80 percent of the money supply in India.

Proponents of the plan state that it will curb counterfeiting and prevent the wealthy from hoarding cash to elude taxes, but it has had dramatic effects on the lower classes in a country where 95 percent of small businesses and traders deal in cash. As expected, this has been the reaction:

One of the more interesting phenomena occurring from the ban is the rise of the honest “Nigerian Prince scam”.

In the dishonest version a person is contacted, generally through email, and given a sob story about how the author is in an authoritarian state and has a large amount of currency they need to smuggle out of the country so that it isn’t confiscated. They offer the victim a percentage of the money in return for allowing the use of the victim’s bank account. All of this is followed by a request for account information and when successful, the scammer drains the account instead of adding millions to it. In the honest version playing across India, the wealthy are turning to their employees and others and asking them to deposit sums of around 250,000 rupees, an amount that won’t be scrutinized by the government.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

Maids, drivers, nannies, and cooks in India are experiencing unusual politeness from their employers. Beyond the work they do every day, they suddenly have another use – to launder the undeclared cash which the rich have been hoarding in steel wardrobes, under the mattress and in under-bed storage.

The money is to be kept in the account until a safe point in the future where it will be withdrawn minus a fee to the depositor. While there are other methods such as buying and exporting gold or paying employees months in advance, the “honest Nigerian Prince (not-a-scam) is perhaps the most inventive and goes to show that no matter what a government does to attempt to strong-arm tax money out of its populace, some will find a work around to keep what is theirs.”

(H/T Zerohedge.com)

04/21/16

Harriet Tubman – A Fine Choice For The $20 Bill

By: Chris Knowles

I must admit, until this week I had never heard of Harriet Tubman. I am not an American so have a bit of an excuse about not previously knowing anything about the first African American women to appear on a US bank note.

She was born into slavery but after escaping, perhaps motivated by her strong Christian faith, devoted her life to helping others escape and build meaningful lives for themselves. She was later involved in the campaign for women’s sufferage.

I think she is a worthy choice for commemoration on the $20 bill. It is not because she is a woman or that she is an African American, it is because what she did was right. She stood up to tyranny, took personal risks for the sake of others and was unwavering in her cause. Her place on the banknote was earned on pure merit. She is an inspiration to all those who stand up to current vested interests who use their power oppress others.

As a campaigner for women’s suffrgage she is very relevant to the present day where democracy is gradually being subverted under the pressures of globalisation. In America and in countries around the world large corporations can buy politicians via the lobbying process and manipulate opinion via their control of the media. We live in a world of backroom deals and legislation by treaty, a world where the simple vote has become a debased currency. It is a world where currency itself is debased due to the hidden machinations of our system of central banks which often amount to organised officially sanctioned theft (her presence on the $20 bill in this sense is rather ironic).

We live in a world where cherished freedoms are being eroded, the kind of basic freedoms that were hard won by people like Harriet Tubman. Her presence on the $20 bill will be an ever present reminder of the idea that the only antidote to tyranny is eternal vigilance.

Harriet Tubman provides a lesson on how a person from humble origins and limited, or even non-existent means, can achieve great things. She also reminds us that freedom isn’t free and that to be free often requires real effort and sometimes even personal sacrifice.

05/12/15

This one policy has correlated with higher unemployment, more bankruptcies and greater inequality. Can you guess what it is?

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

In a new book titled “The Floating Kilogram,” former long-time Wall Street Journal editor and founder of the New York Sun Seth Lipsky makes an impassioned, reasoned, common sense case for returning America to sound money in the form of the gold standard.

Much like Steve Forbes and Jim Grant with whom we have touched on this issue before, as Seth and I discussed during an in-depth interview, Lipsky believes there is significant economic and moral merit to backing currency with a tangible asset, with benefits for all Americans.

One of his more interesting and overlooked arguments concerns some of the devastating consequences for the country since we officially severed the link between the dollar and gold under President Nixon in 1971. Lipsky explains:

From 1947 when [the] Bretton Woods System really got operating to 1971, when the dollar was convertible into gold at a 35th of an ounce, unemployment in America averaged 4.7 percent. And then we got rid of the Bretton Woods system — we defaulted on it — we went to fiat money, and in the years from 1971 to today, unemployment has averaged significantly above 6 percent. Low unemployment: gold standard. High unemployment: fiat money.

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But it’s not just unemployment. The bankruptcy rate which Elizabeth Warren likes to focus on was one point something per thousand for years, and suddenly it shot up. When did it do that? The mid-1970s when we went off the gold standard and moved to the age of fiat money.

And you’ve no doubt read about this economic Thomas Piketty who likes to warn about the inequality rate. It was trending gently downward for years and suddenly it began to shoot up. That was the mid-1970s when we abandoned the gold standard and went to a system of fiat money.

So there are a lot of reasons to start looking at this and to see whether the absence of a sound dollar is the root cause of our system of growing inequality and high unemployment and lack of jobs and high bankruptcy rate, and to see whether something can be reformed so as to bring us back to a system of sound money. [Links ours]

The title for Lipsky’s book, “The Floating Kilogram,” reflects an editorial published in 2011 in his New York Sun, in which Lipsky asked the question, “Why don’t we let the kilogram float?” The implication is that if weights and measures are no longer defined, why shouldn’t the kilogram — a man-made measure which the New York Times noted may have been losing mass — fluctuate just as a dollar fluctuates in value. Lipsky wrote:

[H]ere in the modern age, the members of the Federal Reserve Board don’t worry about how many grains of silver or gold are behind the dollar. They couldn’t care less. And when the value of a dollar plunges at a dizzying rate, the chairman of Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, goes up to Capitol Hill and, in testimony before the House, declares merely that he is “puzzled.” No “new urgency” to redefine the dollar for him. The fact is that we’ve long since ceased to define the dollar, and it can float not only against other currencies but against the 371 ¼ grains of pure silver.

So why not the kilogram? After all, when you go into the grocery to buy a pound of hamburger, why should you worry about how much hamburger you get — so long as it’s a pound’s worth. A pound is supposed to be .45359237 of a kilogram, of course. But if the Congress can permit Mr. Bernanke to use his judgment in deciding what a dollar is worth, why shouldn’t he — or some other PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology — be able to decide from day to day what a kilogram is worth?

During our interview which you can listen to in full below, we discuss the fundamental flaws in and immorality of floating fiat money and several other topics including:

Why the gold standard is a live and vital issue today
What the Constitution says about money
Congress’ dereliction of duty on money, but causes for optimism given recent reform efforts
The three times when sound money should be sought out
Central planning of the money supply enables the expansion of the welfare state
The folly of the Fed’s full employment mandate
How America has been in default since the early 2000s

Note: The link to the book in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.