Max Keiser
Alternet
June 9, 2008
If we refused to cash our checks, the value of the dollars in our pockets
would go up by more than the face value of the stimulus refund.
I’ll explain two reasons why you should not spend your economic stimulus
check: the first applies to people who work regular jobs for wages, the second
applies to people who work in investment banks for bonuses.
If you work for wages (or live on a pension), consider this: if every American said, “No thank you” to Bush’s stimulus check and refused to cash them, the value of the dollars in your pocket right now, in terms of their purchasing power would go up by a factor greater than the face value ($600) of the stimulus check. In other words, if you didn’t spend these checks, you’d be the richer for it.
The reason being that America does not have a hard-money economy, it’s a debt-based fiat currency economy. All the money in circulation in America has been borrowed and then re-lent. So borrowing more money ($168 billion for the stimulus package) and then re-lending it to Americans, as Bush is doing, only increases the debt load and debases the value of the currency outstanding (against a backdrop of stagnant wages and minuscule interest rates for savers).
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If an American was planning to spend $40K this year on food, clothing, shelter, health and various other expenses and they were hoping to defray some of that cost thanks to Bush’s stimulus check understand that by simply adding another $168 billion of debt (the cost of the stimulus package) on top of America’s current multi-trillion debt load will continue the Bush-Paulson-Benanke trend of debasing the purchasing power of your money and, therefore, raise the price of goods and services by more than the $600 ‘gift’ (without a commensurate rise in wages or increase in interest paid on savings).
This is why America’s debt problems won’t go away. Every dollar spent adds debt and spawns more fiat currency issuance which has the effect of decreasing the purchasing power of the U.S. dollars in your pocket. Bush tries to make up the difference by borrowing even more; borrowing 340 million a day to fund the war and close to 3 billion a day to cover U.S. operating expenses, not to mention Wall Street borrowing over $30 billion a day to keep their Ponzi scheme going. All this borrowing keeps alive the vicious financial spiral trending lower towards permanent currency debasement and possible sovereignty loss.
Now, if you work in investment banking, the opposite is true. Bigger money supply growth means bigger fees and bonuses. You may lose more than $600 in purchasing power with that $600 stimulus check, but the fees and bonuses you make processing all that debt (read: dollars) is greater still. In other words, the more the government increases the debt load (money supply), the more you make — even discounting for the lost purchasing power caused by the inflationary impact of higher money supply growth.
But listen bankers, resist the temptation to spend your stimulus check even though by doing so you are increasing America’s indebtedness and, therefore, your fees and bonuses.
In a year or so, after 99.999% of America has cashed their stimulus check, any checks that have not been cashed will accrue value as collector’s items.
As such, the value of these checks as un-cashed mementos of the failed Bush presidency should appreciate at the inflation rate plus a collector’s item premium rate for years to come.
As a matter of fact, an enterprising soul might make a pretty penny by setting up a website to buy people’s un-cashed stimulus checks at the face value plus a small premium. Five to six years from now, you might be able to re-auction and sell these un-cashed checks on eBay for double or triple the price you paid to Asian and European collectors buying these up like visitors to the Berlin Wall who buy chunks of concrete left over after the collapse of East Berlin.
About this time each year, the Bilderberg group convenes a weekend conference in a hotel or resort somewhere in North America or Europe in which 120 or so billionaires, bankers, politicians, industrialists, scholars, government officials, influentials from labor and education, and journalists assemble to discuss world affairs in private.
This year, the 56th Bilderberg meeting took place over the weekend at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Va., seven miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. As in previous years, Bilderberg critics are berating the mainstream press for observing a "blackout" of a group they believe directs a secret, shadow government.
The critics claim that Bilderberg grooms future American presidents and future British prime ministers, pointing to Bill Clinton's attendance in 1991 and Tony Blair's in 1993. Time magazine reported in 2004 that John Edwards impressed attendees at the Bilderberg session in Italy, after which John Kerry asked him to join his presidential ticket.
According to the 1980 book Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was enthusiastic about sending staffers to Bilderberg, President John F. Kennedy drew heavily from Bilderberg alumni—Dean Rusk, George W. Ball, George McGhee, Walter Rostow, Arthur Dean, and Paul Nitze—to staff his administration, and many Carter administration officials had attended the retreat.
According to a list published by one critic, the attendees of Bilderberg 2008 include Henry Kissinger, Ben S. Bernanke, David Rockefeller, Vin Weber, Henry Kravis, Robert B. Zoellick, Donald Graham, Vernon Jordan, Charlie Rose, and their equals from Europe. Protestors staked out the elite at the hotel's entrance and recorded "surveillance" videos inside and outside the minimum-security facility before the event commenced.
About this much the Bilderberg critics are right: The mainstream media ignored Bilderberg 2008. According to Nexis, Wonkette and Raw Story noted the event and the critics' objections on the Web. A simple Web search produces Bilderberg detractors Alex Jones and Jim Tucker sounding their alarms.
And about this, too, the Bilderberg critics are right: The meeting of 120 prominent world figures probably constitutes some kind of news. Yet to be fair to the mainstream press, it's tough to report from a private gathering locked down tight by professional security.
Bilderberg organizers expect participants to keep the weekend's discussions off-the-record, stating in a press release this year that "the privacy of the meetings has no purpose other than to allow participants to speak their minds openly and freely." Bilderberg isn't the only international group that asks participants to zip their lips. The United Kingdom's Chatham House enshrined such a rule back in 1927, and similar requirements apply at some Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Strategy Group meetings, just to name a few. Private groups meet in almost every town in the world for confidential chats. It's the way of the world. Bilderberger gab does occasionally leak, as with John Edwards' 2004 talk, but the poshes and powerful generally zip their lips.
What do you suppose would result if, say, the Washington Post had assigned a reporter to Chantilly's luminary jamboree? The Associated Press sent a reporter to cover the 1978 Bilderberger session in Princeton, N.J., but all he filed was a scene piece describing "men in gray suits and sunglasses" chasing him away from the "off limits" grounds of the Henry Chauncey Conference Center. From that dispatch (by Steve Hindy):
Kissinger casually strolled around a small manmade pond Saturday, coming within a few feet of the road leading into the complex.
He circled the pond twice, first with a gray-haired pipe-smoking man and then with a younger man. Kissinger appeared grave and attentive while the men talked of things like "range limitations."
Kissinger looked annoyed and declined comment when approached by a reporter.
One of two Secret Service agents trailing the former secretary nodded sympathetically saying, "You've got to give it your best shot."
And yet the "mainstream press" can hardly be accused of blacking out Bilderberg. The New York Times has mentioned Bilderberg a couple dozen times since 1981, according to Nexis, including in a 2004 piece titled "A Secret Conference Thought To Rule the Word." Other pieces in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe refer to the group. Just last month, Anne-Marie Slaughter mentioned the Bilderbergers in her Post review of a new book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.
