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Few of the precious liberties so loudly decried as “Stolen!” are taken without consent. Most often, the responsible party’s name can be read aloud from the signature line of a contract. Such contracts spell out in explicit detail the terms in which the signatory’s liberties were voluntarily surrendered.

The three largest debt-contracts are the mortgage, car loan, and student loan.

Renting, driving a used car, and getting a degree online, are superior alternatives to the traditional debt-contract solutions. By deploying them, and paying cash for everything else, you’ll enjoy more liberty than the masters who sell debt-contracts as products to formalize the slavery of those who sign them.

Three Upgrades and Emancipation, Too

What’s better? To not be a slave, or to live better than the masters who seek to enslave you?

1 —Better Housing

The best second home is a hotel room anywhere you want to be. The best first home is a rental. Renters:

  • May live anywhere they want.
  • Can move at a moments notice.
  • Are not responsible for maintenance.
  • Don’t have to insure or replace what they don’t own.
  • Don’t pay property taxes.

There’s more, but that’s enough, for now.

2 — Better Cars

A new car loses 9% of its market value when you drive it off the lot. A year later, it’s lost 19%. By year three, the car has lost 42% of its “new” value.

If you have the cash, keep that 42% in your pocket or buy a better version of a 3-year-old car that someone else bought new. If you don’t have the cash, then save up to buy a four-year-old car for 49% of its original purchase price, or a five-year-old car for 60% off!

Better still, if you’re renting (see #1) move close to work where you don’t need a car for transportation.

3 — Better Education

If a college degree is good, then getting one twice as fast at 1/10th the cost is excellent. Or, get two online degrees in the usual four years for 20% of the cost of one. Or, get your bachelors and masters degree in four years for 90% off of each!

Best education of all: homeschool, GED out of high-school, get a degree (or two) online, figure out your purpose(s) in life and become an apprentice of some real-world masters. You’ll be engaged with life, in your teens, in ways your peers won’t be until their 40’s, if ever. You’ll even have a few degrees to show the weenies who think education is a membership rather than a transformation.

Delayed Gratification?

If you want to work a few decades in slavery, then the debt-free alternatives in this article would delay your gratification, forever.

If, however, you’d prefer to live fully engaged in your highest purposes the solutions in this article are light-speed travel in comparison with the norm.

Pay Cash or Don’t Buy

The solutions to the three largest debt-contracts come from a five-word rule-of-thumb principle: Pay cash, or don’t buy. By following this rule-of-thumb, all debt contracts are avoided, including the three largest described in the first solution.

Debt-Contracts are Products

Debt-contracts are not the cause of slavery. They’re products created to address the shortcomings of ignorance and a lack of determination to remain debt-free.

The Slave’s Problems are The Master’s Solutions (And Products)

Those who buy debt-contracts purchase their own slavery. The slave’s problems are the master’s solutions. They’re sold to the debtor to shortcut the personal development required to remain at liberty.

Liberty is purchased at the expense of the acquisition of knowledge of the debt-free alternatives to all such mechanisms of slavery.

Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as an obedient slave, you are a slave of the one whom you obey? — Romans 6:16

If you can read this article you can sell your house without using a realtor. I’m doing it now and its taken 2-4 hours a week to keep the sale on track. Selling without using a realtor will save you 4-7% on the sale price. The median priced home in the US in 2008 is $212,400. A 4-7% commission on the sale is $8500- $15,000! That’s a lot of money. How long would it take you to save $15K after you pay your mortgage, food, clothing, children’s school, insurance, car payments, income taxes, state taxes and pizza on Fridays? This is the story of what I did to sell my own house; how it happened, what worked, and what didn’t. I’ll tell you what I would do differently the next time, problems that had to be solved and tips I would offer other sellers who want to sell their house without using a realtor.

Worse Time to Sell, Ever!

There has never been a worse time to sell a house than now (10/8/2008). Truth be told: I had the ability to avoid selling at the wrong time, but, got caught for reasons beyond the scope of this article. I’m not complaining: At least I was able to sell, to find the buyer myself and for what I know to be the highest price possible. The excess inventory of houses on the market is huge, prices are down 30% and the average house is on the market for 11.2 months before being sold or taken off the market. What made the process harder for me was the constantly falling prices throughout the sale. If I can sell a house in this market, without a realtor, from three thousand miles away without even showing up for the closing then every seller has good reason to be optimistic.

Help-U-Sell Wouldn’t Return My Calls

The first thing I did was look for a company I saw on 60 minutes called Redfin. I liked their philosophy on breaking out realtor services into parts and giving the seller the option of choosing which services they wanted. Since I was selling from a distance I thought paying for the help would be a wise tradeoff. There were no Redfin offices in Boca Raton, Florida. So, I looked for a local Help-U-Sell since they break out their services, too. My wife used them to sell her house in California and had a good experience. She believes it saved her a lot by using them instead of a old-school realtor. They added her to the MLS, advised her on price, did several open houses which eventually produced a buyer. My first call to Help-U-Sell was not returned. My second phone call to Help-U-Sell was not returned. My friend David called a third time and they didn’t return his call, either. This is what lit my fuse and got me thinking about selling it myself. If they won’t return my calls maybe they won’t return calls from potential buyers, either? And after my wifes experience I didn’t want to have to pay the whole 6% commission to an old-school realtor.

Brief Summary of My Sale

I live in California and will be closing on the sale of my house in Florida, this week. I hired a friend to prepare the house for the sale, set the price, found the buyer, arranged for a Title Company to handle the escrow and the paperwork and will not be present at the closing. The title company is sending all the documents to me in California to perform what they call a ‘mailaway’ closing. I’m not bragging. It’s a description of what happened. My friend David spent two weeks at the property preparing the house, painting, putting up the sign, hanging a lockbox on the door, gathering info on the local market and fixing up the kitchen and bathroom. Excluding David’s work, its taken 2-4 hours per week to find the buyer and keep the sale on track.

The Steps

These are the steps you’ll be going through to sell your house:

  1. Preparing the House
  2. Setting the Price
  3. Finding a Buyer
  4. Negotiating the Details
  5. Doing the Paperwork
  6. Solving Problems
  7. Closing

If you’re like me you may think you need a realtor to help with every step. What I’m going to explain in this article is that realtors help you mostly with Step 3.: Finding a Buyer. I was worried about all the paperwork. All those contracts, disclosures and escrow forms. Don’t realtors handle all that? No, they don’t. The Title company does. Your realtor just calls one and turns it over to them. You can call one, just as easily. They make the paperwork a breeze. You have to manage all the other steps, anyway, whether you use a realtor or not. With a little extra effort you can find your own buyer (Step 3), too. If you do, you’ll be paid handsomely by saving yourself a large commission. To put it another way: Finding a buyer is the most expensive part of the process to outsource.

Warning: This Article Could Be a Book

Some books have one thing to say and take a book to say it. This article has a books worth of things to say and will take an article to say it. Update: I did have to make this article into a book. It grew to ~20,000 words and is now a mini-book. I’ll post a few more thousands words, here, and you can download the book, for free … Click here to subscribe A web search reveals that people have written books about this subject. I haven’t read them, so, can’t vouch for them. Searching Google turns up many articles about this topic. I found these articles to be encouraging, but, not conclusive. They don’t seem to be written by actual sellers who went through the whole process of selling their own house. The next time you search for articles you’ll find this one. Problem solved. The goals for this article are:

  1. To document and guide you through every aspect of one sale: My own.
  2. To be complete enough that you could make a decision to use, or not use a realtor for your own sale.

I’ll be as brief as the subject allows. When you’re selling your own house it won’t seem too long. Hopefully, it will be saving you time, effort and some money, too.

Terminology

A broker holds the licence for a Real Estate office. They are the only legal party eligible to receive the entire commission. It is harder to become a broker than an agent in that there are more tests involved and more legal requirements to keep the license active. An agent works for a broker and receives a percentage of the commission for conducting the sale. A realtor could be either an agent or a broker. This article will use the term Realtor, in most cases. It does’nt matter whether you’re working with an agent or a broker. They’re both realtors and, therefore, working for a commission.

Real Estate Commissions – The Last Dinosaur

The internet has destroyed or brought into the new millennium every commission known to man. Every commission, that is, except for what realtors take for connecting sellers with buyers.

Realtors Make More than Architects?

My brother was an architect. Architects earn one of the hardest BS degrees taking five years of college, not four. When they graduate they spend 5 years preparing for the boards. During that dues paying period they make half as much as a good waitress. When they finally get their board certification they still have to work another five years for another architect because its so difficult to establish a practice. Yet another another 5-year dues-paying phase. Architects design, draw, code, change, every aspect of material and space and attend to every imaginable detail to bring a building into existence. Their exposure to liability is insane to the point that many can’t afford the insurance. If an architect does manage to have his own practice the costs to run the practice dwarf those of a brokers office. What’s the architects commission on a building after this lifetime of preparation, exposure to liability and detailed work on the building, itself? Six percent. That’s right, the same commission a broker gets. How would you compare what an architect does for a building to what a realtor does for it? How would you compare the cost of education and training of an architect to that of a broker? Case closed. I’m not criticizing Realtors, agents or brokers. I’m criticizing the size of their commission. It’s disproportionately large for what they do compared to an architects work on the same building. How much work does it take you to earn the money your about to turn over to the realtor for finding a buyer?

The Biggest Deal of Your Life

Selling your house is the largest deal most people will ever do. Optimizing the 6-7% commission on that transaction should be a priority. I say ‘optimize’ instead of save because, if you do pay a commission, you should get the best service you can and pay only for the services you get. Many people would say they want to use a realtor because it’s the biggest deal of their life. After all, if you pay 7% to an agent that’s still leaves 93%. If you feel this way I still think you should try selling yourself for the first 30-days.

What About the Other Transaction Costs?

Can you save on them, too? Yes. But, why talk about them before you’ve gone after your biggest cost? The other transaction costs pale in comparison.

DIY, Not!

Just because I want to save the 6% commission to a Realtor doesn’t mean I want to conduct the whole sale, myself. No, thank you! These two things are not the same thing. Enlisting the talents of other people is a smart thing to do. And its a brilliant thing to do when selling your own house. I received (And paid for) an extensive amount of help on each step of the process. Several things motivated me to attempt the sale without using a Realtor:

  • My opportunity cost is currently low.
  • I’ve read a lot on the subject and am familiar with the process.
  • I’m an experienced buyer, but not seller.
  • I wanted to see if saving the 6% commission was possible.
  • I have another house for sale and could save 6% on that one, too.
  • If successful I could write this article and help others save a chunk of money in bad economic times.

And, like I said above, Help-U-Sell wouldn’t return my calls. Too bad for them.

Real Estate Expert, Not!

The subject of Real Estate is vast. One could devote a lifetime to all the various aspects to become an expert. Even then, a true expert would have to specialize because there are so many fields of knowledge involved. So, what?! I didn’t have to be an expert to sell my house, expertly. And, neither do you. A mere play on words? Not in my case. I’m selling a house, not running a business or a career. I suspect my perspective is more useful to other sellers because I’m not an expert. You don’t need to be an expert to have each step of your sale be expertly done.

Don’t Become an Agent

Becoming an agent to sell your own house is like “Burning down a house to make toast”. Total overkill. Not needed. In fact, being an agent is probably a liability, see below. Don’t become an agent just to sell your house.

Liability, Not an Asset

In 2002 I studied to become a real estate broker. I enjoy the subject, read all the prep material and thought about taking the tests. But, working as a broker or agent did not fit my personality so there was little point in getting the license. One of the things I learned is there’s a downside to being an broker: They’re held to a higher legal standard of performance. In practice, this means you’re exposed to more legal liabilities because its easier to accuse you of negligence if you have a license proving competence. So, why not just be competent without a license? I’m more interested in having knowledge and understanding than in having a license saying I do. Dishonesty at any stage of selling a house is more likely to blow the deal than anything. But, the law can often be an ass. Let it be an ass to someone else. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not claiming to know as much as a broker or an agent. They have their focus and I have mine. Theirs is to run a business and earn commissions. Mine is to sell my house for the optimal price and keep as much of the proceeds of the sale as possible. Those two areas of focus are not the same.

John T. Reed – Thumbs Up

Much more helpful than reading the material for the brokers license was reading John T. Reed’s books on the subject of Real Estate. I read all 20 of them and they’re the best survey of the field of Real Estate I’ve ever found. Each of his books describe a different aspect of Real Estate mostly for the benefit of investors, specifically. However, taken in total, the reader is given a practical overview of the subject like no other. What’s great about John’s writing is his readability when writing about a complex subject. He will tell you in two pages what would take another author an entire chapter if they had the knowledge to say it. In my opinion that makes John an expert’s expert. Although I highly recommend all of John’s Real Estate books I don’t think reading them is a prerequisite to sell your house without using a realtor. However, there is no doubt that you’ll do a better job of it if you do. You’ll have to decide that based on your goals and time available. It should go without saying that the cost of buying all of his books is nothing compared to the deal you’re trying to optimize. (Note: This article is a report from the battlefield of my sale. Don’t blame John for mistakes I made and write about in this article. At some point, we all have to stop reading and start doing. I read until I was blue in the face and still made mistakes. That’s just the way it goes when you’re in the ring and have to get the job done. Rest assured I made less mistakes, and lost less money, by learning from others experience and writings.)

How Do You Handle a Hungry Realtor?

By understanding what they do, what they charge, how they talk and what motivates them. You may even end up hiring one. If you do I hope you’ll be able to put their role in perspective and limit their service to the help you need to conduct the sale.

Realtors Want Speed, Not Price

Brokers use price when deciding what state, region, city, neighborhood or type of property to specialize in selling. After that its all about speed. Any broker in their right mind values speed over price. Brokers make more money if they sell more houses in less time. Even if they’re only selling one house it’s a better use of their time to sell it quickly. No problem, so far. Why tell you the obvious you may be wondering. Because the higher the price the slower the sale. In fact, if you know the fair market value (FMV) for your house and take 5% off that price John T. Reed refers to it as the ‘Quick Sale Price’. Its called that because you can sell it within a week if the market is efficient. Click here to subscribe

Doesn’t Higher Price Means More for Them?

Sure, their commission, based on percentage, goes up with the price. But, the amount the commission goes up as the price rises is small compared to the commission on the whole deal. Sure they’re supposed to represent your interests and a lot of that is getting the highest price possible. But advising you on the highest price you can get will almost always add time to the length of the sale. That may be ok with you, but, it is not in the realtors best interest. Even worse, setting too high a price is the most common reason for a deal not going through, at all. And setting the price, even for the ‘experts’ is not an exact science. Why take any risk at all, the realtor may conclude. I’m not making a blanket accusation of realtors, here. I’m merely pointing out there’s a natural tension between getting the highest price you can and the time it takes to sell. And you should know that the realtor cares a lot more about speed than you do about price. There’s little to no incentive for the buyer or sellers broker to hold out for a higher price. A realtor will probably tell you if what you’re asking for is too low for the area. But, its more likely a broker will need to talk a seller down in price. Some of that may be to correctly adjust a sellers unrealistic expectations, fine. However, be on the lookout for the suggestion being offered merely to increase the speed of the sale. If it is, make sure that’s what you want to accomplish. Unfortunately, its always to the brokers advantage to lower the price . . . to increase the speed.

6-7% and The Seller Pays It All

Realtors say they only charge 3%. But, there are two realtors: The buyers and the sellers. They each charge 3%. That makes realtor fees 6%. Most of the time the seller pays it all. The marketplace has decided the seller has more to gain from the sale than the buyer. I don’t like that, but, it makes sense when you realize the seller has one house to sell and the buyer has many houses to choose from. Why would a buyer pay broker fees if they can buy the same or similar house and negotiate those fees away? This has become standard behavior so sellers know they have to pay all the broker fees and most of the other closing costs, as well. The exceptions to this are when the buyer doesn’t have competing choices for the house or has decided they must have a particular house. Any situation that would inspire these feelings in the buyer have the potential for the seller to get the buyer to share in the broker fees.

Do I Have to Pay the Buyers Broker?

Not, at all. But, don’t blow a good deal over it. Even if you don’t use a realtor you may get a call from a realtor who has ‘found’ you a buyer. As with all people interested in your house I recommend you show it to them.

Don’t Let Them Screen You

Don’t let the buyers realtor screen your position on paying their commission before they show their buyer the house. If they don’t like what you say they may not show their buyer your house even if your house is perfect for their buyer. This would be a violation of their ethical code as a realtor. But, I don’t recommend you risk losing a buyer for your house by relying on their broker adhering to their own ethical code. On the initial phone call just tell them the truth: You’re willing to consider any offer, agreeable to all parties, that will make the sale go through.

Your Options

If their buyer is interested in making an offer you have the following options for paying the commission to the buyers broker:

  • Recommend the buyer pay since the buyer benefited from their service.
  • Agree to pay them a commission, but, you only pay X% to buying brokers.
  • Tell them you’ll pay if the buyer increases the sales price (Same as buyer pays).
  • Don’t pay them and leave the choice to the buyer (Probably resulting in splitting it).

It’s possible the buyer signed a contract with their broker. That’s got nothing to do with you. Don’t interfere with a contract the buyer may have signed with his broker. In other words, you have options, but not obligations, if a realtor shows up and wants money from you for a buyer.

Offers to Help With the Sale

When they find out you’re not using a realtor they may offer to help you conduct the sale in exchange for a commission. You should already be prepared to handle the sale, yourself. Tell them no thank you. They have enough to do helping their buyer find a house, a loan and guiding them through the sale. You’ve already got a Title company handling everything and don’t require assistance.

Be Prepared For Intimidation Tactics

You may get all sorts of intimidating advice from Realtors, at this point. All of it is aimed at trying to get you to use a realtor instead of finding a buyer yourself:

  • They may threaten to ‘take away’ their buyer (Which violates their professional obligation to act for the benefit of their buyer).
  • They may imply you’re a fool and know nothing about real estate and should let the experts handle it.
  • They may claim you’ll never sell the house if its not on the MLS, which they can generously put you on (For 3%).
  • They may throw escrow terms around in the hopes that you’ll be intimidated.
  • They may try to confuse you on the steps of the process.

Hopefully, you’ve read my entire article by then and don’t fall for any of it.

Divide and Conquer

This is how ‘experts’ do it: They talk fast and confidently, using terms you havn’t heard, about a subject that’s new to you. Your wife, or you, get nervous and says, “Maybe we should stick with the professionals”. The remainder of the conversation is you pitting your instinct up against their ‘expertise’ on a subject you haven’t yet studied. Even if you ‘win’ the argument they change the subject and say another misleading 50 words to start over again. Since you’re going with instinct and it appears the agent is going with ‘facts’ you get in an argument with your wife because she wants to go with the ‘experts’ because the deal involves so much money. I truly hope this article helps you with that situation. I will give you one example, and how I would handle it, below. However, I can’t address everything that may come up. If you do decide to talk with a realtor I recommend studying up on all the potential things that might come up before the meeting. Especially if your meeting as a couple. Why not print out a copy of this article for your wife? Heck, at the very least you can show the realtor this article and say, “Why can’t I do what this guy did?”. Maybe it will change the subject into a service you might want to purchase from the realtor. Something costing less than their entire 3%, I would hope.

One Example and How I Would Handle It

Here’s one example of the kind of misleading advice brokers give out. Its from an article on the web written by a Realtor named Elizabeth Weintraub on about.com. The title of the article is Who Pays the Real Estate Commission? How Does an Agent Get Paid? Elizabeth writes: “It can be argued and, quite rightfully so, that the buyer always pays the commission. Why? Because it’s typically part of the sales price. If the seller did not sign an agreement to pay a commission, the sales price might have been lowered. And therein lies the appeal of buying homes through unrepresented sellers because, given the same logic, those prices should reflect a net sales price without a commission. But those sellers haven’t quite figured this out yet which causes potential buyers of those listings to be consistently disappointed.” Ms. Weintraub’s advice is wrong, misleading, insulting to sellers and meant to intimidate potential buyers and sellers of FSBO (For Sale By Owner) properties. Let me explain why: (Note: This concludes the excerpt from Chapter One of the e-book,  “How To Sell Your House Without Using A Realtor”. It grew to ~20,000 words and is now a mini-book. You can download it, for free, from McGillespie Free Resource Library.) Click here to subscribe

As promised by investor Lt. Col. Thomas Baker, the forensic reconstruction of Galt’s Gulch Chile has been completed and was hand-delivered to the FBI and the IRS on June 8th, 2015. Informed by the reconstruction, investor David McLeod filed criminal charges against Kenneth Johnson and Pamela Del Real in Chile (Docket number RUC 4710-2015) on May 20th. More US civil suits against Johnson are likely to follow.

On a phone call with Cathy Cuthbert, she described the forensic recontruction as a wellspring of previously unknown facts and details about what actually transpired around GGC. Timelines, Contracts, Accounting, Wire Transfers, Corporate reports, Recorded conversations between Johnson and investors, Videos, Credit reports, etc. showing Johnson to be at the heart of the problems surrounding GGC he has blamed on others. In other words, despite Johnson’s claims of working for the investors as a developer the reconstruction shows that the “service” Johnson has been providing them is similar to that which the bull provides the cow.

Readers of this GGC series will find it no surprise that Johnson used investor funds to spin a complex web of deceit involving multiple entities, off-shore trusts, multiple bank accounts, share swaps with Mario Del Real and others, inflated prices, ridiculous late fees, absurdly negotiated prices, etc. all while using corporate bank accounts like a personal checking account.

It’s tempting to leave Jeff Berwick out of discussions about GGC now that he’s so publicly apologized. Unfortunately, his involvement in cutting Cobin and German out, starting a different entity into which to take title (IGGSA) and trying to get the New Zealand trust and offshore structures in place is quite evident in the reconstruction documents. There’s little doubt Ken Johnson was the instigator of the most serious problems with GGC, and continues to make all things worse with his presence and current behavior. However, to say Berwick wasn’t right there at the beginning is to not tell the story, correctly, at all. As mentioned in Part 3 my hope is that Berwick will externalize his contrite heart into some modest assistance to ongoing recovery efforts or investors in extreme need. With the introduction of these new charges, with more to follow, the publicity surrounding the aftermath of GGC is not going away, anytime soon.

Note: The criminal charges filed by David McLeod, and some documents of the forensic reconstruction I was able to coax from the recovery team, have been added to the free E-book, “The Creature from Galt’s Gulch”. I will continue to add such elements to the book as I receive them and within the boundaries of preserving the privacy of the investors.

Justice Provided by the People Involved

As described by Cathy Cuthbert and Thomas Baker, the breadth and depth of the forensic reconstruction they’ve put together is quite impressive. It’s not only a meticulous investigation and gathering of documents but they’ve formatted the whole thing into a package that makes it accessible to outside parties.

I’m not sure what may have transpired between Tom and Ken but the USMC motto of “No better friend, no worse enemy” might echo in Johnson’s mind for some time to come. That is, if Johnson is able to comprehend what has just happened to him. The agencies he’s just been reported to will hound him for the next decade. Half of that decade will be spent defending himself against the criminal charges that were filed against him in Chile on May 20th, by David McLeod. And, there’s more to come. A rather obvious tip to Johnson would be: The next time Tom makes an offer of either “Friend” or “Enemy” . . . go with the former choice. Who knows? Maybe the recovery team would still let Johnson wiggle out of his fraud if he’d just hand over the land the investors paid for.

The FBI white collar crime fraud division will find that most of the investigative, forensic accounting, and reconstructive work has been done and hand-delivered to them by the recovery team. With so much work already complete perhaps the agency will bump the case to the top of their case-load so they may stand in front of their logo at a news conference and receive some good publicity.

The Del Real Factor

Johnson is solely responsible for inviting a local Chilean, Mario Del Real, into GGC affairs. And yet, investors have been made to suffer Johnson’s endless complaining about problems he’s had with Mario and his daughter, Pamela. That’s because Johnson performed a bizarre GGC stock swap with Mario hoping to make big money on the value of water in an Andes Water company called Rio Colorado. By the time the smoke had cleared Mario owned most of IGGSA and his daughter was the general manager of the company! In other words, Johnson was no longer the dominant share holder of GGC and had lost all control over the entity that holds the land. What great “Development” work, Ken!

(To understand more about this failed deal see Chapter 7, “The Rio Colorado/GGC Share Swap”, in the GGC E-book.)

If you’ve read my “Stolen Car Metaphor” at the end of Part 7 you know my take that Johnson’s epic fail with the Del Real share swap is merely the lamentations of a thief who bungled and lost the proceeds of a previous theft. The fact that Johnson’s audience for these lamentations are the victims of the first theft is exactly the kind of behavior I find consistent with Dr. Robert Hare’s psychopathy checklist.

Any deal Johnson made with stolen shares of stock can, and should be, overturned. Therefore, whether the Del Reals colluded with Johnson, or are merely his victims, is a matter for a judge to decide (Yes, there is no longer any way to resolve GGC disputes without involving state agencies, unfortunately). Pamela Del Real’s resume (She’s now the general manager for IGGSA) shows substantial accounting expertise. Such expertise will make it impossible for her to plead ignorance if there was any foul-play on the Del Reals part.

Johnson’s Latest Ploy, Revealed

Johnson has now revealed his latest ploy and what’s behind his re-occupation of the GGC hacienda and grounds. And, surprise, surprise, it’s a variation on his usual … lies mixed with just enough truth to confuse and divide his listeners against themselves while holding out a carrot and stick for those who either cooperate or resist.

More specifically, Johnson is trying to confuse and divide investors against lead investor Josh Kirley hoping they’ll put pressure on Josh to relent in his legal actions which have locked up Johnson’s sale and pillage of IGGSA assets. He also wants the investors to help him get rid of his “Del Real” problem. The carrot Johnson offers is the same old title to land he’s been promising investors, and not delivering, for the past two years. The stick is his continued presence and purported counter-attacks on investors who “continue to attack him”. For those not familiar with Johnson-speak, the word “attack” describes the actions of anyone who points out to Johnson another of his own broken promises.

If only the investors will help him convince Kirley to relent, and help him get rid of the Del Reals, then Johnson can deliver, at long last, the coveted Titles to actual land the investors have been pestering him about, all this time.

E-mail Between Host and Parasite

A recent e-mail exchange between Josh Kirley (The host) and Ken Johnson (The parasite) is an excellent illustration of what actually went wrong with GGC. It’s also an excellent example of what happens when “The creature” is confronted with truth.

My thanks to Josh Kirley for making this e-mail exchange available:

On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 12:27 PM, Josh Kirley <joshkirley@gmail.com> wrote:

“Ken,

For two years, you keep sending out the same emails. Always full of juicy drama, promising the release of more information in the future. This behavior is unprofessional. It inspires no confidence. Why can’t you just do your job?Try building something. Try living up to your responsibilities. Produce something. Be accountable. If you are GGC’s Minister of Propaganda, who is the Project Manager? Your accusations are baseless and defy all logic.

Tell me if you can refute the accuracy of the following facts. I swear to their order and authenticity.

1) You are wholly responsible for bringing the del Reals into this nightmare.

2) You pleaded with me to give 1 to 2.5 million dollars to Mario del Real for his Rio Colorado Project. You personally vouched for Mario, insisting the Rio Colorado deal was a “No Brainer” and a “Homerun”

3) I told you that I had my suspicions about del Real and would get back to you after performing some due diligence.

4) Once I told you that I was not willing to put money into a second Chilean investment, you totally reversed course.

5) You refused to provide me with del Real’s Ruta number, or even his full name, intentionally stonewalling my attempts to research his background.

6) You told an entire room full of defrauded investors at the second festival that your deal with del Real was a “totally separate” matter between you and him.

7) You told all of us that your alliance with del Real was “none of our business” and would have no impact on our contracts.

8) When I offered to pay, out of my own pocket, to have del Real looked into for you, you refused my help, saying that you feared if I looked into del Real, he might “get spooked” and walk away from your deal.

9) Weeks later, you came back to me, begging for a million dollars. You said that you were double crossed by del Real and you needed me to buy back the shares that you gave to him.

10) When I would not bail you out, you predictably changed your characterization of my relationship to the project from savior to saboteur.

I’m sorry if I cannot respond to each of your lying emails. But, I have to give priority to my day job. I suggest you do the same. Maybe start by paying employees, repaying loans, and living up to the contracts you signed.

Josh Kirley”

The Parasite Responds

“Josh,

As you know, you are lying about most all that you discuss. There are communications between you, Monica Wehrhahn, Ken Carpenter, Alison Sherman, the Del Reals and more. Do you think that those just disappear because you are now pitching your false storyline to yet another news outlet? This has always seemed to be a publicity stunt for you, just as GGC always have been for Jeff Berwick.”

Johnson then goes on a bizarre rant about Jeff Berwick and BitcoinATM, Wire Transfers, Cafayate, Argentina (If you can believe it) and ends with:

“We are working on completing what Mr. Aguirre was unable to complete, or was unwilling to complete. We are working to fix the $1m+ damages that those labeling themselves “rescuers” of GGC have inflicted upon the farm, buildings and property. We don’t spend our time pitching a false story line for our own publicity, as Mr. Berwick and yourself seem to focus on quite a lot.

Ken”

Notice that Johnson does not dispute, nor even address, any of Kirley’s questions or statements. This is the way e-mail “Exchanges” and “Dialogues” go with Johnson. For readers who may have wondered . . . “Why don’t they just ask Johnson if [Insert simple question here] the above exchange with Josh Kirley is your example. Josh speaks the pure truth and asks sincere questions and, in response, Johnson doesn’t respond, at all.

The last paragraph is classic Johnson-speak. For readers who don’t understand the dialect his e-mails usually end with a payoff like this if you know how to read Johnson-speak. That is, you take all accusations as a literal description of what Johnson, himself, has done or is doing. In his last paragraph, therefore, we learn that Johnson has caused more than a million dollars of damage and is pitching false story lines for his own publicity.

Johnson’s Assaults

I’ve spoken with two people who were physically assaulted by Ken Johnson. The first was a young man Johnson tried to push around (Mentally and physically) during Johnson’s employment with The Dollar Vigilante. This young man would not tolerate Johnson’s nonsense and was the first person to speak up to Berwick about his suspicions about Johnson poisonous behavior. If Berwick had listened it’s anyone’s guess how Galt’s Gulch Chile might have played out without the involvement of Ken Johnson.

The second assault was that of a 70-year-old Salesman that worked for GGC who didn’t fare so well in the “Encounter”. Sandy “Clarence” Sandfort was grabbed by the lapels and thrown over a couch by Johnson when he learned that Sandy was about the leave Chile after all of Johnson’s promises had remained unfulfilled. Sandy was severely bruised and Johnson had almost managed to break a few of Sandy’s ribs. He was so shaken up by Johnson’s assault that Berwick had to fly in the next day and negotiate an NDA and payoff to keep Sandy quiet about the assault. Johnson later broke the terms of that NDA by talking about the assault with a third-party. Hence, Sandy’s retelling of the assault to me.

and Taunting . . .

Tatiana Moroz, who worked for Ken Johnson and wrote the GGC theme song, shares her experiences with GGC and with sociopaths in the liberty movement. Most of what involves GGC is in the first 25 minutes of the video, but, the ladies (With Julia Tourianski, BraveTheWorld.com, and Gigi Bowman, gigibowman.com) go on to tell other fascinating stories around the theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqQW5a4dJMk

Contrast the story Tatiana tells in the above video with the excitement she started out with and you’ll get a feeling for the roller coaster ride that was GGC. Tatiana perfectly captures the cognitive dissonance felt by most who’ve followed the promise, and then the reality, of GGC in the hands of Ken Johnson.

Favorite excerpts:

“This nonsense [Sociopaths in the Liberty Movement] is disgusting and ridiculous … and what’s gonna happen, here, is that people are going to leave and they’re not going to want anything to do with it (True Liberty) and all we’re going to be left with is the dirtbags who think this kind of behavior is ok. … And I’m sick and tired of the people that are trying to call attention to the sociopathic behavior within our own movement getting trashed.”

Tatiana’s right, of course. Natural law doesn’t evaporate around people who wish to retain and use their liberties. If anything, we must be more mindful of universal human truths because we are the people exploring the boundaries of liberty. A tolerance for lies, manipulation, sexual assault, and broken contracts is not “What’s up!” in Liberty. Anyone claiming that such tolerance is “Cool” is not a libertarian. They’re just another asshole in disguise.

John Cobin Interview

I had the pleasure of interviewing John Cobin about GGC for 1.5 hours, last week. The interview was mostly for my E-book about GGC. However, of interest, here, is the remarkable consistency of Dr. Cobin’s story with everything he’s said from the very beginning. Cobin is abundantly forthcoming about every meeting, document, e-mail and conversation he’s had with respect to GGC. My reaction to the interview was to tell him that it was a pleasure to speak with someone involved in GGC that looks better and better with each discovered and documented fact about the project.

Cobin said the impression he got from Jeff Berwick and Ken Johnson was that, they alone, might be able to supply the funding for GGC. He had no idea that they would, almost immediately, take his extensive research and information about Chile and GGC and cut him out of the deal. Although he concurs with the possible psychopathy of Johnson he puts Berwick in the same category in terms of the way they defrauded him. And yet, I had the impression that, even now, he would be forgiving of Berwick if approached in some meaningful way to make restitution.

Cobin said Johnson came after him, very agressively, in a libel suit in Chile. Guess what happened when the court date arrived? Johnson was a no-show! I won’t compare a libel suit with a podcast debate, but, I’m becoming quite familiar with Johnson’s cowardice in the face of someone determined to tell the truth. So far, Johnson’s been a no-show on two podcasts about GGC that he, himself, dared me to participate in.

For those interested in Chile I highly recommend the interview James and Johnathan conducted with Dr. Cobin on Monday over at Borderless. Cobin proves himself to be THE reliable source for all of Chile and much of the rest of the “Expat” world, as well. Cobin’s book, “Life in Chile” greatly increased the effectiveness of my 21-day country-vetting trip to Chile in 2012. I look forward to reading his latest book, “Living in Chile” when I can come up for air over the summer.

GGC Theatre

Johnson has been roaming around the property making absurd videos in an attempt to document the damage done by the recovery team. Perhaps the investors share my hope that Johnson continue making these videos as they are helpful in documenting what Johnson, himself, has done.

One of the things Johnson harps on in the videos are the “Damages” done by the recovery team causing a poor yield from the wells. In fact, such poor yields were caused by Johnson’s complete ignorance and inept handling of the well work around the property. Despite the pleadings of the local workers Johnson put Manuel Hermosillo in charge of the wells and the work was terribly bungled. And yet, somehow, the investors end up blamed, yet again, for Johnson’s incompetence. Such GGC Theatre might be a useful prop to help Johnson influence the Chilean locals who have no idea what’s going on with GGC. To those who’ve read the first thing about GGC, however, they are just that much more documentation of Johnson’s failings.

Message to local Chileans:

Johnson’s accusations of others are a reliable confession of his own failings. There is truth in many of the disasters he documents but your messenger is the culprit, not the victim. Johnson’s “Investment” into GGC remains at zero while 76-investors and buyers have given $10.45 million dollars for the purchase of everything you see associated with GGC. 72 of the investors have been begging Johnson to leave for over a year.

What happens next?

First, most of the predictions made in Part 6 seem to be coming true. That includes Johnson hinting that he wants to sell water rights, again. Happily, he’s unable to do so with the current injunctions in place.

Johnson has some time while the ocean water recedes in preparation for a tsunami of new legal problems.

Some think Johnson will stick it out to the end because his claim to be “Working for” the investors is his only defense against the legal actions that have been filed against him. But, Johnson also claims he controls or owns everything (Vacillating between claims of control or ownership) depending on his audience and the phases of GGC. How could someone who owns everything be an employee? How could a trustee (Controls everything) claim to be a trustee of beneficiaries who have been begging him to leave for the past year?

Perhaps Chile, and the local populace of Curacavi, will no longer tolerate Johnson as the criminal charges pile on. If he’s made to flee then we may see more pictures of his backpacks of stolen money while he’s on the run. I think he still has a Paraguayan passport from the passport scandal he was conducting at TDV. Still, all these charges filed with state agencies will haunt him wherever he goes. As of today, Johnson has put a digital data noose around his own neck that will follow him around the globe.

The world discards ideas and people that present multiple standard deviations away from “normal”. And yet, Reality has always been phenomenal and noumenal. To ensure you’re able to thrive in the artificial chaos of this generation you’ll need to be an outlier, in many ways. Here’s “The Outlier’s Handbook” to optimize your trajectory.

The Outlier’s Handbook

(Thriving in Artificial Chaos)

Table of Contents

Part 1 — What Outliers?

“Let Your Reasonableness Be Known to Everyone”

  • Ockham’s Razor: Benefits & Limits
  • The Bookends of Normalcy Bias & Cognitive Dissonance
  • “This Book Goes Too Far!”

What Outliers?

  • Outliers Defined
  • You Know You’re An Outlier If . . .
  • Outlier Benefits
  • Outlier Costs
  • Personal Secession and Other Outlier Mindsets

Part 2 — It’s Your World, Boss!

This Is Where You Live

American Roulette

  • The Constitution is Safe!
  • A Bank with Social Services Around It
  • Democracy: The God that Failed
  • The Corporation
  • The Deep State
  • Fascism, American Style

Lifecycle of Nations

  • “Poverty of Nations” Report Card
  • Imperial Collapse Playbook

Danger, Will Robinson!

Technocracy: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation

Regional Bloc Head Mercantilism

  • Gee, Maybe Nation-States Weren’t So Bad, After All
  • Solutions Amidst Global Fascism
  • Change Happens Like This, Now

Part 3 — The Usual Suspects

Call Them As You See Them

Origin & Story of Rulers and Authorities

  • Angelic Gen 6 View: Consistency & Insights
  • So, Who are “They”?
  • The “New” Face of Evil (Follow the Blood)
  • Long Term Trends Require Spiritual Unity
  • The Minions
  • A Working Structure of Oppression

They Walk Among Us

  • Serial Killers
  • How Can You Spot One?
  • Political Ponerology
  • 7 signs you might be dating one
  • Protection From Them
  • Speech Patterns
  • I, Psychopath
  • The Hidden Cost of Killing Psychopaths
  • Beware the Backlash

Elements of Their World View

Their Goals

  • ”Ye Shall Be As Gods”

Their Methods

  • The Moral Code of Evil
  • Inversion
  • Undisclosed Adhesion Contracts
  • Counterfeit Money
  • Controlled Markets
  • Technocracy
  • Stacked & Interlocking Pyramidical Structures
  • Consolidation
  • Democracy
  • Eugenics
  • Perpetual Fear
  • Long-Term Planning
  • With Methods Like This, Who Needs the Occult?

Part 4 — Acquiring Immunity

Move #1: Acquire Personal Immunity

Personal Matters

  • Purpose is Everything
  • Managing Outlierhood
  • Growth
  • Ethical Time Travel

Health Matters

  • First Do No Harm
  • Clean Food, Water, Air & Place
  • Nutrient Dense Diet
  • Gut Flora, Probiotics and the Second Brain
  • Optimal Exercise
  • Stress & Breathing
  • Life Extension & Blood Sugar Management
  • Sensible Health Insurance
  • Putting It All Together

Spiritual Matters

  • Intelligent or Random Design
  • Oneism (Monism) vs. Dualism
  • CINO’s & MINO’s
  • Christianity Leads To Science, Islam leads to Murder
  • Gandhi or Jesus?
  • Get Blessed
  • Get Uncursed
  • Supernatural Immunity: The Mind & Way Of Christ
  • The Whole Council of God
  • Spiritual Warfare
  • Practical Examples of Spiritually Based Solutions

Locational Matters

  • The Best Place to Live
  • Where Not to Live
  • Should you relocate?
  • The World is Yours
  • The Illusion of Ownership
  • Mobility
  • G.O.O.D Project – Lessons Learned

Family Matters

  • Instrument of Recursive Perfection
  • Spouse Choice
  • Children
  • Extended Family
  • Friends Worth the Title are Family
  • Community

Legal Matters

  • Natural Law
  • The Constitution is Safe!
  • Jurisdiction Matters
  • Where is the Agreement?
  • It’s Hard to Be a Free Man
  • Unraveling Your Liberty

Financial Matters

  • Money is for Immunity & Purpose
  • Business as Extension of Purpose
  • Tax Penalties for Fear and Poor Planning
  • Mortgage Slavery, Repealed
  • Austrian Economics is Real Economics
  • Investments in Immunity & Purpose Have the Highest ROI
  • Asset Protection

Political Matters

  • Terms of “State” & “Government”
  • The Diversion Of Left – Right Thinking
  • The Votes that Matter
  • Optimal Government = Perfect Self-Government
  • The Chief Asset Of The State: Fear & Belief In It’s Necessity
  • All Matters of Liberty Are Related
  • Caveat Viator: Libertarianism and Anarchy are Aspects of a Complete Worldview
  • Govern Thyself Perfectly and Hold Death Dear

Perspective Matters

  • The Most Valuable Commodity on the Planet
  • Philosophers On Donuts
  • Terms of “Freedom” & “Liberty”
  • Equality & Authority
  • Freedom & Structure
  • Peace Does Not Flow From Passivity
  • Proof and Truth
  • You Can’t Beat Everything with Nothing
  • “Let’s Just Split the Difference and Find a Middle Ground”
  • Stoicism
  • The Opportunity in Uncertainty
  • If Swamp Rats Can’t be Exterminated Why Can You?
  • What About America?

Doing Matters

  • Tony Robbin’s Best Trick
  • Think Spiritually, Act Locally
  • Getting Things Done
  • Low Hanging Fruit
  • Tragic Flaws of Conventional Prepping
  • Expert Tips
  • How To Lose Without Fighting (An Outlier’s Not To-Do List)

Part 5 — Ants & The Human Mosaic

Change The World in Four Moves

  • Humans as an Ant Army
  • Move #1: Immunity
  • Move #2: Specialize
  • Move #3: Move
  • Move #4: Cooperate
  • Humanize the Best Attributes of Animals & Insects

Part 6 — Problems: Solutions

Move #2: Specialize & Pick One

Personal Concerns

  • Training Disguised as Education
  • Shortening Attention Spans
  • Media Agitprop

Health Concerns

  • Eugenics
  • Vaccines Vs. Immunity
  • Socialized Medicine
  • Food Fascism & GMOs
  • Fluoridated water
  • Nuclear Waste & Meltdown Disasters
  • Geo-Engineering
  • Disease(s) Cured

Spiritual Concerns

  • Psychopathy
  • Moral Relativism
  • Odious Debt (Slavery)
  • Wars of Conquest
  • False-Flag Attacks
  • End Times Decoder Rings
  • 501c3 Churches

Locational Concerns

  • Agenda 21
  • Scientific Control Grid
  • Power Grid Fragility

Family Concerns

  • The State as Great Father
  • Broken Families

Legal Concerns

  • Patent Squelching
  • Webs of Undisclosed Adhesion Contracts
  • Drug Wars
  • Licensing
  • Militarization of Police
  • Surveillance State
  • Monopoly
  • Bonus: Beating Traffic Tickets

Financial Concerns

  • Fractional Reserve Banking (The Theft of Human Labor)
  • Disappearing Middle-Class A.K.A Unemployment
  • Currency Wars
  • US Bankruptcy
  • World Banking Systems
  • Institutional(ized) Theft
  • Market Manipulation
  • Global Cooling, Warming …Climate Change?
  • Technocracy

Political Concerns

  • Collectivism
  • Globalism

Part 7 — Appendices

  • In Case of Emergency: Read First!
  • Four Ways to Parse Solutions
  • Reading List for Outliers
  • Outlier Creeds
  • Sovereignty & Law
  • Agorist Manifesto in 95 Theses
  • Agorist Road-map Kyle Bennet
  • 100 Ways To Leave Leviathan
  • Wayne & Barry’s Guide for World Rulers

Rent and K.I.S.S.

All the land development talk in my Galt’s Gulch Chile series seems pretentious. Then again, merely telling the average person you’re flying to Chile has a good chance of causing eyes to glaze over as if one is doing something exotic. Flying to Chile is not exotic; it’s merely something that’s possible the instant one decides it is.

If there’s a storm headed your way it’s time to cut the crap-talk about some castle you own and get to a motel room anywhere the storm isn’t. Why be grandiose about the simple and elegant act of leaving to let the storm pass? In fact, why say anything at all except to make a few calls to shutoff utilities and keep any promises you’ve made to others before leaving town? With mouth firmly closed, just hop a flight and get a room.

Engaged Withdrawal is Not Passive

The point of all this ex-pat business is to contribute to the solution through engaged withdrawal. Having gone through much of the advanced work of ex-patting my family I can vouch for the truth that engaged withdrawal is not a passive undertaking (Hat tip to Wendy McElroy for this link).

Two Paragraph Expat Guide to Chile

Forget about all this talk of land development and ownership. Motels, Hotels, Apartments, houses and cabana’s dot the entire country, have already been developed, and are yours for the renting. Your best second home is a rental anywhere you want to be. Keep it that simple and you won’t even be limited to Chile.

Nine out of ten Chilean ex-pats end up in NE Santiago (Las Condes) so just rent there for a few months and make scouting trips on the weekends. When the 90 days is up on your visa fly to Argentina for the weekend and reset it. That’ll get you out of the US for six months with your “measly” first passport. You have one, right?

It’s Your World, Boss

The world is yours the instant you recognize it is. The nagging urge to “own” things, perhaps stronger in the American psyche, is best kept at bay when conducting one’s life across multiple nation-states.

I recall streaming the movie “Inglourious Basterds” [sic, indeed] from netflix to the ipad and realizing the adjoining cabana could be rented for my kids, along with the one we were in, for less than our US mortgage. With that thought, the fear of being trapped in proximity to the endless artificial problems of the state’s creation started to melt away. My second thought was that all this was achieved for the price of a plane ticket, rental car and a hotel room.

As Billy Joel Sang in “NY State of Mind”. . .

“Hop a flight to Miami Beach, or to Hollywood”

to which I add:

. . . or to Panama, New Zealand or to Chile.

 

I read LewRockwell.com, every day, because he writes or posts the best line-up of articles in the world…every day!

For a modest incentive to checkout Lew’s site (And put it in your daily reading routine) please see the following articles on Lew’s site:

This is a re-post of a summary of Catherine Austin-Fitt’s financial detox plan as given to Max Keiser five years, ago. The 15 pieces of wisdom extracted from the video are timeless. If you had started working on them in 2009 it would have had a dramatic impact on your life. Five years from now the same will be true about starting to work on them, today.

Catherine Austin Fitts is a breath of fresh air.

With a keen understanding of the links between politics, corruption, and money she is unmasking economic con-games, one by one, for the benefit of us all. Give her 15-minutes and she’ll explain the most complex schemes and enable you to see right through all sides of the rhetoric we’ve been hearing all our lives.

Not only that, but, she offers powerful solutions and action plans that can be implemented within minutes of watching one of her videos.

Listen to her describe her “Bailout Plan” in the video, below, which I found on The Edge with Max Keiser.

1. – Save Time

  1. Cut out TV and corporate media. They’re a brainwashing waste of time. You’ve got better things to do and think about. Get radical about cutting this out and save 5-10 hrs a week of “bad training”.
  2. Get corrupt people and enterprises out of your life. They get access to your data and money. Consider carefully the banks, brokerage houses or institutions you do business with.
  3. Control personal data. There is no privacy. Think through who you do business with and who has access to your data.
  4. Compliance – be impeccable with compliance. In a situation with highly complex rules and no privacy it’s easy to get caught up in a dragnet.
  5. Simplify. The less things you’re responsible for the better.

2. – Get Smart

Implementing 1. gives you time for 2. and 3.

  1. See things as they truly are.
  2. The greatest wealth creating entity of all time is the family. Think strategically about your family and friends.
  3. If you’re not in a conspiracy you need to start one. Conspiracy means to breathe together. Start a conspiracy with your family to benefit each other and keep corrupt institutions out of all your lives.
  4. Network with other people who know what’s going on. Nobody is as smart as all of us.
  5. If you have time, understand history. What’s happening today is logical if you understand the history of things like narcotics trafficking, mortgage fraud, etc.

3. – Reposition Your Assets

  1. The goal of the games of economic warfare are control and equity.
  2. Build your equity. Invest in your health and your knowledge. Think strategically about managing these key assets.
  3. We’re leaving a large bubble and now people want hard assets. Shift out of phony financial instruments into securities and hard assets with solid economics.
  4. Stick with long term trends. Follow the tapeworm. Don’t be confused by economic nonsense into investing into anything that is not long term and high quality like food, water, gold, Precious metals.
  5. Demonetize. We put money into financial assets, get yield, then buy things. This is a losing proposition.

Catherine Austin Fitts is always worth your time. Check out her blog which she calls, The Solari Report.

An item with money qualities might be a good barter item. To be an Optimal Barter Item it must also directly fulfill multiple human needs in the circumstances of the barter.

For each scenario under consideration ask yourself what items would directly fulfill multiple human needs and be widely accepted in trade in excess of the trader’s need. If the item is also transportable, divisible, storable, measurable and hard to counterfeit then it’s a winner: An alternative form of money in the circumstances of the barter.

Since anything can be used in barter it’s worth making an equation as a tool to separate the wheat from the chaff:

(M * N * LP)1-n = Optimal Barter

Where M are the money qualities, N is how directly the item fulfills a need and LP is the Life Priority of the need fulfilled. Note the 1-n subscript. That’s because an item can fulfill needs across multiple categories of life. In fact, the best barter items do.

Money & Substitutes – (M)

One way to compare barter items with each other is to compare each with money and rate them according to how they measure up. The top items on the resulting list are possible money substitutes. Their fulfillment of human needs, however, is another matter entirely. See ‘Ammo vs. Money’ where I compare ammunition with all the attributes of money.

When barter is king money is dethroned: It takes a backseat to the direct fulfillment of human needs. The concept of money and its substitutes is still useful, however, because many items that fulfill human needs are also decent money substitutes.

Water, food, syringes, antibiotics, IV Lines, portable water filters, firearms, ammunition, batteries and radios are worth more than the money used to buy them even in good times. In a crisis some of these are needed so badly they might overcome the biggest stumbling block of barter: The lack of a double coincidence of wants.

Direct Need Fulfillment – (N)

Water quenches thirst, Food satisfies hunger, Tarps block rain and wind.

The more direct the fulfillment the higher quality the item. I’m a big fan of substitutes but they’re not as easily recognized in the midst of a crisis as the real thing. Since barter items are best stocked after covering the essentials for your family it’s best to focus on items that fulfill needs, directly. There’s one exception to this line of thinking.

The best barter items span multiple categories of use: They directly fulfill some needs and indirectly fulfill others. Water is an easy example: It directly quenches thirst and cleans skin and has an almost infinite number of other uses. Water’s indirect uses multiply it’s desirability as is the case with other Optimal barter candidates.

Life Priorities – (LP)

It’s a constant burden to mankind that choices must be made with imperfect knowledge. With perfect knowledge ordering priorities is a cinch. However, wait too long for specifics to prepare and risk not being prepared, at all.

My Life Priorities are the same in good times and in bad. In a crisis I’ll rely on intuition to reorder priorities according to the scenario. For instance, although Water is #1 the urgency in finding a source is greater in a desert than in a rainforest. Medicine is #5 though in the absence of sickness or injury securing communications might pay bigger dividends. These are not compromises; just working flexibility and a trust of intuition after being prepared, in general.

For the purposes of preparing in advance for a non-specific crisis I’ve chosen to order life’s priorities in the following categories:

  1. Water
  2. Shelter & Clothing
  3. Food
  4. Security
  5. Health & Medicine
  6. Communications
  7. Power
  8. Hygiene & Sanitation
  9. General Tools
  10. Transportation

Going through your own reasoning process and placing these categories in order is surprisingly useful. Knowing your priorities is key in making disciplined and balanced choices when allocating limited resources.

Narrowing Down the Barter List

  1. Think through your Life Priorities and order them into categories (As many as you find useful).
  2. Consider the bolded items in the Comprehensive Barter Item List as barter items worthy of consideration (And please send me your suggestions).
  3. Group the resulting items from step 2 that strike you as filling the most pressing human Needs into your life priority categories.
  4. Sort items within each category by your sense of its importance.
  5. Use your Life Priority categories and assign a primary category and then the secondary categories that the item serves.
  6. Take each item compare it with the attributes of money and assign a value where 10 = Money and 0 = nothing in common with money.
  7. Keep sorting using the criteria in steps 4 thru 7 until you narrow the list down to 20 to 50 items or however many you’d like to use as input to the Barter Equation.

The resulting items are the best items to use as input to the equation.

Consider Three Scenarios

Consider narrowing down your preparation scenarios to three:

  1. The most likely threat to your physical location.
  2. The threat that comes to mind when consulting your informed intuition.
  3. The everyday potential threats and outages that normal life presents.

For example, my three are Fire, Dollar devaluation/Inflation and Electrical Power Outages.

Applying the Equation

Grabbing some promising barter items from the Comprehensive Barter Item List for my three scenarios here’s my impression of the values that should be assigned to them for each variable in the Barter Equation. The equation has not yet been applied. They have merely been sorted by their primary Life Priority category and then by their respective Money qualities. This is as far as people usually go when when considering barter items.

  • The higher the N the more direct its fulfillment of LP1 (As Ordered by my Life Priorities, above).
  • The higher the M the more qualities of Money the Item has.
  • LP1 is the items primary fulfillment category (In my opinion) and LP2 thru N are its secondary fulfillment categories.

Sorted by Primary Life Priority, then by Money Qualities

Barter Equation not Applied.

Item N M LP1 LP2 thru N
Water Packets 10 7 1 3,5,7,9
Portable Filters 5 5 1 3,5,7,9
Duct Tape 7 7 2 4,5,7,8,9
Tarps 8 6 2 4,7,8,9
Aluminum Foil 4 8 3 5,7,9
Coconut Oil 10 7 3 5,7,9
Eggs & Milk 10 6 3 5
Baking Soda 3 5 3 5,7,9
Ammunition 8 8 4 3,6,9
Syringes 5 6 5 7,9
Alcohol Wipes 6 6 5 7,9
Antibiotic Lotion 8 6 5 7
Fuel 8 6 7 4,5,6,9,10
Generator 8 2 7 4,5,6,9,10
Soap Bars 7 6 8 5

 

Applying the Optimal Barter Equation (First Dimension Only)

Here is where the items rank after using a spreadsheet to apply the equation to each items M, N and the LP of their primary category only. In other words, this is where the item would rank if its fulfillment of needs in other life priority categories was left out of consideration.

(M * N * LP) = Optimal Barter

Rank Item N M LP1 LP2 thru N
1 Water Packets 10 7 1 3,5,7,9
2 Coconut Oil 10 7 3 5,7,9
3 Eggs & Milk 10 6 3 5
4 Ammunition 8 8 4 3,6,9
5 Duct Tape 7 7 2 4,5,7,8,9
6 Tarps 8 6 2 4,7,8,9
7 Antibiotic Lotion 8 6 5 7
8 Aluminum Foil 4 8 3 5,7,9
9 Portable Filters 5 5 1 3,5,7,9
10 Alcohol Wipes 6 6 5 7,9
11 Fuel 8 6 7 4,5,6,9,10
12 Syringes 5 6 5 7,9
13 Soap Bars 7 6 8 5
14 Baking Soda 3 5 3 5,7,9
15 Generator 8 2 7 4,5,6,9,10

Applying the Optimal Barter Equation to All Dimensions of Each Barter Item

Applying the equation now to both the primary and secondary life priority categories the item serves. Notice the increased liquidity of items that serve a broad number of categories.

(M * N * LP)1-n = Optimal Barter

Rank Item N M LP1 LP2 thru N
1 Water Packets 10 7 1 3,5,7,9
2 Duct Tape 7 7 2 4,5,7,8,9
3 Ammunition 8 8 4 3,6,9
4 Coconut Oil 10 7 3 5,7,9
5 Tarps 8 6 2 4,7,8,9
6 Fuel 8 6 7 4,5,6,9,10
7 Eggs & Milk 10 6 3 5
8 Portable Filters 5 5 1 3,5,7,9
9 Aluminum Foil 4 8 3 5,7,9
10 Antibiotic Lotion 8 6 5 7
11 Alcohol Wipes 6 6 5 7,9
12 Generator 8 2 7 4,5,6,9,10
13 Soap Bars 7 6 8 5
14 Syringes 5 6 5 7,9
15 Baking Soda 3 5 3 5,7,9

The above fifteen choices were chosen only to show how to apply the equation. It would be interesting to apply the equation to all barter items and see the results. If there’s enough interest that would be a fun exercise for another article.

The resulting Top 10 items of your application of the equation are most worthy of your barter resources. They will directly fulfill the needs of your family while providing a backup form of money or trade liquidity during barter economies. Your proposed trades with these items are more likely to be accepted by fellow traders than those who haven’t gone through the exercise.

Whiskey, Cigarettes & Chocolate

These three items have proven themselves to be good barter items in real barter ‘economies’. The equation handles them well if you add them to your Life Priority list and give them a high “M”, which they deserve.

For instance, perhaps you would swap my priority of “Transportation” with “Vices” to account for Whiskey and Cigarettes. You would also rate these items high in “M” because they do fair well as money substitutes.

Chocolate fits naturally in the Food and Health categories and has a high “M” if the climate is not too warm.

The value of everything varies continuously in time. That doesn’t mean there’s no value in evaluating their relative standing in the only moment we have: Now.

Optimal Barter Items are like Superfoods

To be honest I had a different equation written when beginning this article. After going through the entire process it became obvious that some items are to barter what superfoods are to health: They provide a kind of comprehensive nourishment; they fulfill multiple high-priority needs!

I did not rig the equation to favor items that met multiple needs. I only discovered that no item that fulfilled only one need could compete with the liquidity or desirability of a barter item that fulfilled needs across the spectrum of life’s highest priorities.

The Trade Trumps the Traded

As with the use of money trade is more valuable than what’s traded. Who makes that judgment? You do by making the trade. After all, if you’d rather keep the items you’re exchanging then why don’t you? Even protesting ‘no choice’ admits you value what you get more than what you give. And, your fellow trader feels the same, no?

The Trade Trumps the Traded, every time, as evidenced by the fact that the Trade was made.

Human Needs Trump Liquidity

The purpose of your Optimal Barter Equation is to zero-in on the barter items most worthy of your limited resources. They’re the most liquid components of your preparedness plan. Since the top candidates are also essential it’s a judgment call to decide when you have enough. While your overall preparedness will be well served with these items be careful not to prioritize barter items over the broad range of essentials needed by every family.

Copyright © 2014 by Terence Gillespie. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given to McGillespie.com

The Daily Grind

Working this plan to pay off your house doesn’t free you from the daily grind, in the short term. You’ll still need to:

  1. Keep making the payments on your mortgage.
  2. Keep making payments on other fixed debts and expenses.
  3. Scrape and save whatever you can.
  4. Store your savings into silver until you reach your target number of ounces.
  5. Keep your head above water during this disintegrating economy.
  6. Monitor the price of silver and be willing and able to cash in when the time is right.
  7. Cash in, pay the taxes, make large payments on your mortgage and lay low.

Doomed From the Start?

Are you paying on a mortgage from the overvalued bubble market?

The contrast between the difficulty of paying off a bubble mortgage and buying a new house in cash is going to get extreme. If it’s too much harder then consider a short sale, rent for a while and use your silver to purchase a new home when the time is right. You might as well benefit from lower housing prices.

As mentioned in Part 1 the money the bank ‘gave’ you was conjured out of thin air because of The Awful Truth of How US Dollars are Created. It’s morally wrong to break a legal contract and I’m not advising one to do that. However, many debtors are questioning whether a mortgage is a legally binding contract since the bank doesn’t provide equal consideration (The Bank brings no risk to the contract since the money is created out of thin air using your signature).

Tax on Standing Still

Standing still will cost more dollars in the future than it does now. If you manage to come up with more dollars to stand still you’ll be taxed as if you’ve gained something.

This double theft of inflation and more taxes is ridiculous, of course. But, you’ll have to put more silver aside to pay the taxes on your non-gain. Otherwise, you’ll fall short of you’re goal to pay off the house.

How much more silver you’ll need for taxes is a function of the size of your mortgage and your current and future tax rates. It’s a moving target, but, you’ll have to take a stab at quantifying it to achieve your goal.

Federal

Buying or selling back silver eagles require no 1099 broker reporting. $1000 face value of junk silver (752 oz silver) is the threshold of reportabability. Less than 1000 oz of other forms is not reportable. A tax advisor would probably tell you that its good to know the reporting rules, but, they don’t affect the definition of when you’ve realized a capitol gain. You may, however, want to sell in increments less than 1000 oz. to minimize paperwork.

Sales Tax

Purchase in increments greater than $1500 to avoid paying sales tax on the purchase. Check your state rules for the threshold.

How Much Silver Do You Need?

Enough to pay off your mortgage, pay taxes on the non-gain and cover the spread on the buy and sell of the silver. If you can swing it why not add all your fixed debts to the mortgage amount and buy your way out of all debts?

The 1980 price of silver was $50/oz. The inflation adjusted price of $50 in 1980 is $129 in 2008. And yet, the current October 2009 spot price of silver is $16.32/oz.

Based on your belief use a silver price of anything between $35 and $129 for your calculations of the number of ounces to purchase with today’s savings. Then pick the month and year you think it will be worth that price. My number is $75.

I believe the dollar will fall and silver will rise in dollar terms so that one ounce of silver will be denominated in at least 75 dollars within three years. Tell me that its November 2012 and silver is $75 an once and I wouldn’t think you were saying anything extraordinary.

Example

Principal owed = $100K
Silver Now = $16.32
Silver Then = $75
Cap gains tax = 15%
Spread on the buy = 6%
Spread on the Sell = 2%
Ounces needed = 1537 costing $26,589 in todays dollars with buy spread
Sale price of 1537 oz. after paying sell spread = $112,969
Cap gains paid = $12,957 (costing 173 ounces at $75/oz)
Net (After taxes and spreads) = $100,012

So, for every dollar you save in silver you’ll be able to payoff 3.8 dollars of mortgage after paying the taxes on the silver gain if silver goes to $75.

How does that compare to saving dollars in a bank at 0 interest? Let’s say every dollar you have now is worth 60 cents then. That means instead of having 3.8 dollars you’ll have 0.6 dollars. That means you’ll have 6.3 times more dollars in your hand if your savings is in silver rather than dollars (3.8 / 0.6 = 6.33).

Step-by-Step

  1. Decide what you think the price of silver will be in three years.
  2. Look up how much you’ll owe on your house in three years.
  3. Divide principal owed / silver spot in #1.
  4. Add in the buy spread on the purchase
  5. Add in the taxes on the gain.
  6. Add in the sell spread.
  7. Add 2, 4, 5 and 6 and recalculate #3 substituting the new number for the numerator (It’s recursive because of the taxes. I made a spreadsheet to calculate 1-7).
  8. Find a source to purchase the silver.
  9. Purchase the silver
  10. Purchase a gun safe, not necessarily shipped to your own property.
  11. Take physical delivery of your silver and store it somewhere safe — The gun safe being one of many options.
  12. Keep making your mortgage payments and other expenses
  13. Monitor the spot price of silver
  14. Get as familiar and comfortable with selling your silver as you did in buying it in step 9.
  15. Wait until the value of your silver hits your spot price.
  16. Sell the silver in increments that enable you to minimize taxes on the gain.
  17. As you sell the silver make huge payments on the principal of your mortgage.

Check the current spot price here and find a local coin shop.

That’s it! Don’t think about it too much or cash in the silver too early. Get back to your life.

If You Don’t Have the Money

The savings required to buy enough silver to pay off your mortgage is small in comparison to the size of a mortgage. However, it’s by no means a trivial amount of savings.

If you don’t have enough then either buy what you can or focus on other real assets. I keep a running list of my favorite real assets in Checklist for Hard Times. In that article I recommend not buying precious metals until you have the real things needed to fulfill the needs of your family. Providing shelter (Paying off the house) certainly qualifies as providing for the needs of your family, in my book.

With all this talk of money and sliver you might be surprised that my philosophy is that Everything is Worth More Than Money.

Belief is Good (And Downside Risk is Minimal)

The technique I’m proposing will work for balanced and financially conservative reasons. Yes, silver is undervalued, but, don’t bet the farm on it. Rather, payoff the farm with it. Use the rest of your savings to hedge risk and purchase tools and seeds for the harvest.

What I’m not saying:

  • Buy silver because you’ll make a lot of money.
  • Silver is your last chance at an investment of a lifetime.
  • Put every spare dime into more silver.
  • The silver market is manipulated and will spring back with a vengence.

I can’t make these statements because markets can be manipulated and investors can be wrong longer than you or I can remain solvent.

What I am saying:

  • The dollar will continue to fall and there is no government plan, action or will to save it.
  • The dollar will not be saved by deflation (Occuring simultaneously with overpowering inflation).
  • Silver is the most undervalued candidate among many other choices for hard assets in which to preserve savings.
  • Silver is not your only alternative for this plan. It’s just what I think is the best alternative.
  • Silver will preserve, though not necessarily increase your real purchasing power. It is the preservation, not the increase that this plan depends on.

Whether you execute the plan depends on your belief. Writers that specialize in precious metals are better sources to hone your beliefs than I can be in this article. I’ll list my favorites, below and suggest a reading sequence.

Belief is best when it comes from your own research. I recommend reading the following articles, in this order, to optimize your time.

  1. Refuting Myths about Gold
  2. “Why is Gold Money?”
  3. Then and Now
  4. The Great Silver Spike of 1980
  5. Find Your Local Coin Shop
  6. Future Gold & Silver Prices
  7. The Silver ETF: What’s the deal?
  8. The Money Chart
  9. How to Buy Silver, & Avoid Getting Scammed
  10. Silver: Questions and Answers
  11. Why Silver is better than Oil as an Investment
  12. Fekete Questions Me, & Why Banning Usury Won’t Work
  13. Fekete Answers Me & the Debate Continues
  14. Bar Graphs of Silver vs. Money
  15. FAQ
  16. The Money Charts – 2008
  17. What’s the Price of Silver? 
  18. Troubled Silver Dealers

In 1980 it took 814 ounces of silver to purchase a median-price home in the US.1 In today’s dollar 814 ounces would cost you $13,154.2

If this happens again you’ll be able to purchase a home, free and clear, for $13,154 of today’s dollar if stored in silver instead of the bank.

This article is not about buying new houses. It’s about a technique to get out of debt and own the house you live in. The debt I’m referring to, here, is fixed: Your rate and monthly payments are the same for the life of the loan.

You need only track the remaining principal on your mortgage and the spot price of silver to come up with input numbers for my proposed technique. Whether or not you execute the plan will depend on your belief.

Belief is best when it comes from your own research. I’ll provide some points of departure for that research but want to focus on execution, here.

Perhaps your belief will come easier knowing that what I’m proposing is just a . . .

Faster Version of the ‘Same Old Thing’

As a debtor, inflation helps pay off your mortgage if your wages keep up.

Every monthly payment is worth less to the bank. The inflation (Theft) is slow enough that wages get a chance to catch up. They rarely do keep pace, but, the number of dollars you receive usually does increase over time.

Three things are happening here on a normal basis as you pay off your mortgage:

  1. Your getting paid more dollars from your employer or customers as you attempt to maintain purchasing power.
  2. Each of your fixed payments are worth less to the bank.
  3. The value of the balance due on the mortgage decreases by the principal portion of your payment and the inflation adjusted value of the remaining debt.

To speed up this existing process I propose that more of the the fruits of your labor be stored in silver to preserve (And possibly increase) its purchasing power. In effect, you’ll be speeding up step 1, above, by translating back your silver savings into dollars at some future date and paying down your mortgage. By that time, however, the dollar will have fallen and silver will have risen.

The silver you cash back into dollars will pay off a larger chunk of the currency your mortgage is denominated in: Dollars. Those increased number dollars may or may not have more purchasing power. But, you don’t need them to. All you need is for the silver to buy more fiat dollars to satisfy the mortgage. In other words, the mere act of preserving existing purchasing power will give the same effect as an increase in purchasing power when it comes to ‘purchasing’ debt.

In this one respect the falling dollar can be used as a One Trick Pony to help you escape from fixed debt.

Give to Caesar What is Caesar’s

As the dollar falls silver (And gold) rise in dollar terms to accurately reflect their unchanging value through the prism of a disintegrating metric (The dollar). Happily for you that disintegrating metric is what you owe the bank. Your mortgage says you owe dollars, not gold or silver. So store real value. When that real value is inevitably worth more tokens in the future turn them over to the bank to purchase your freedom.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s: The tokens he conjured out of thin air that now enslave you.

This Bubble’s For You

As people start to catch on and gravitate towards true value more will flee the dollar and buy up real assets. Silver is one of the prime candidates. The above ground silver available for purchase starts to disappear. This secondary event, in turn, causes more flight from the dollar which feeds an even more rapid rise in the price of silver. Then silver, itself, starts to rise even above its true value being one of the few worthy recipients of the flight from the dollar.

The amplification effect on price between silver scarcity and flight from the dollar continues until it takes the familiar shape of historical bubbles we’re now all familiar with. However, knowing this in advance and setting aside a modest amount of silver means that This Bubble’s For You.

I base this on . . .

A Radical Prediction that What’s Happening Will Continue

The Dollar Has Fallen 40% in the Last Eight Years. Contemplating another 40% decline in the dollar is no more outrageous than expecting things to continue as they have been.

If the dollar falls another 40% then a mortgage of $100K will be worth $60K in current value. Before shedding too many tears for the bank recall that the money they ‘gave’ you was conjured out of thin air because of The Awful Truth of How US Dollars are Created.

Apart from some temporary uptick the MSM will seize on as ‘proof of recovery’ do you know of anything being done that will save our fiat tokens?

Get On the Short List

You won’t fully benefit from the decreased value of the mortgage unless you can manage one of the following:

  1. Your wages keep up with Inflation. If you increased your wages by 40% from 2001 to 2009 it was due to your own efforts not the silly CPI adjustments referred to as your raise.
  2. You get paid the same wages in a currency that maintains its purchasing power. If you can manage this you either don’t live in the US or I’m reading your financial columns and watching your youtube videos. Thank you and enjoy the fresh air of the Swiss mountains or I hope your Mandarin lessons are going well, Mr. Rogers.
  3. You use today’s dollar to purchase an asset or commodity that maintains its purchasing power.
    Bingo! Now, that’s I’m talking about.
  4. You come up with a money making idea that brings in tons of dough. Creating value for our fellow human beings is what it’s all about. Please don’t get lazy and keep the fruits of your labor in tokens.

With sharp inflation it’s a challenge to keep wages up even if you own the company. Business owners walk their own tightrope raising prices. Will the inevitable price increases be passed onto employees, immediately? Actually, they can’t.

Conducting business with a volatile currency is an expertise more likely possessed in a Banana Republic. If you’re trying to acquire such expertise there’s a fabulous little book that has a place on your nightstand: The Hyperinflation Survival Guide: Strategies for American Businesses

Stay Tuned for Part 2 of 2

I’ll get very specific in Part 2 of 2 with:

  • The Daily Grind
  • Tax on Standing Still
  • How Much Silver Do you Need?
  • Step-by-Step Implementation
  • If You Don’t Have the Money
  • Belief is Good (And Downside Risk is Minimal)

1Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver, Michael Maloney, Page 152. Maloney uses the Case-Shiller Home Price Index January 1980 home price of $42,747 divided by the silver price of $52.50/oz.

2It’s 10/30/2009 and silver is $16.32/oz. The dollar index is 76.38.

When something is rare, valuable and getting rarer, the price should go up. If the price goes down then something’s wrong. Since there doesn’t appear to be anything close to a free market for silver nonsensical behavior like this is frequent.

In situations like this you may be tempted buy shares of SLV. I don’t like all the layers between shares of SLV and the underlying metal. Owning Shares is not the same as owning the metal. It’s only the closest you can get to silver when trading on the AMEX. If you insist on pressing a button on the computer screen to “invest” in silver then you’re taking on a lot more risk than you would if you took the trouble of driving to a coin shop.

SLV is charged with buying and selling whatever amount of silver is needed so that the value of the shares match the spot price as closely as possible, after expenses and liabilities. The trades are purposely robotic: The spot price, not skill or market timing, drives the trade.

As ETF’s age, they have to sell more and more of the underlying commodity to pay for expenses and profits. The older the ETF the less correlation they have with the underlying commodity. GLD is two years older than SLV so has less correlation with physical Gold than SLV has with Silver which is still about 99% (And falling).

Another negative for SLV is the size of the stockpile the ETF has accumulated, now 206 million ounces. Such is a ripe target for state seizure or other theft. And, who knows if SLV is just leasing silver, for a day, to pass monthly inspections to satisfy investors of their “reserves”.

It wouldn’t make sense in a normal market to call Gold an investment. Gold is just Money, no more, no less. I do see Silver as an investment, however, even though it’s also money. As a commodity the scarcity of silver is bullish with respect to its industrial demand. This would be smoothly worked out in a free market, if there was one. But, like gold, the spot price of silver (Based on the futures market on the COMEX exchange) is manipulated to make the dollar appear strong. You’d have to be directly privy to manipulation decisions to understand “market” timing.

Eventually, as the physical market cannot meet industrial demand the price will go up irrespective of manipulation. A monetary premium would be a bonus.

Mike Maloney describes Gold and Silver ETFs:

There’s no need for a long article, here. Here’s how US dollars are created out of thin air:

  1. Congress debates legislation.
  2. The legislation is expensive and raising taxes to pay for it is a problem.
  3. The legislation is passed anyway without raising taxes to pay for it.
  4. Congress is a hero for “getting the job done”.
  5. The legislation is sent to the Treasury Department.
  6. The Treasury Department types up a Government Bond.
  7. The Bond is taken to a small group of private commercial banks.
  8. The commercial banks are told the bond(s) are for sale and they can bid on them.
  9. The banks review their Capital requirement and Reserve ratio.
  10. If the banks have $1 on deposit they can bid up to $10 on the bond.
  11. The banks, by law, can bid $10 for every $1 they actually have.
  12. Calling it “fractional reserve lending” the banks type up the money on computer.
  13. They use the typed up money to “pay” for the Government Bonds.
  14. The banks are now due interest from the Government for the money they “paid” for the bonds. But they didn’t pay anything. They typed up the money on their computer screens and created it out of nothing!

If you or I tried to pay our taxes with money we typed up on a word processor we’d be arrested for counterfeiting. Think how great life would be if we could walk around spending $10 for every $1 we had! That would be like working at McDonalds serving hamburgers and getting paid like an attorney.

The commercial bank created $10 out of thin air for every $1 they had, but, it gets worse. The $1 they had on deposit could easily have come from another bank that “paid”  for other bonds with typed-up money. So, even the $1 the first bank had was likely conjured out of thin air.

Now for the clincher: 40% or more of Federal income taxes go to pay for the interest paid to the commercial banks to pay them for the money they merely typed up on their computer screen.

Yes, Fractional Reserve Banking really is a dream come true!

Here’s an excellent video on Money, Banking and The Federal Reserve from the wonderful folks at The Mises Institute: