There you are, sitting at a blackjack table splitting aces, throwing down a few more black chips at a hundred bucks a pop on each side of the spit confident you’ve just made a high probability wager. Faded into your inebriated memory is the rage you felt the day before when you wheeled your leased Mercedes out of the driveway and headed east on your Vegas whoring trip. You know the day – it was when when that ass-crack wielding plumber handed you an eight-hundred dollar bill after two hour’s work patching-up that busted water main. That son-of-a-bitch. He’s probably friends with Alan Greenspan. But that was three hundred miles and a blurring procession of cocktails ago. Now you’re here, bellied up to a green felt-covered table and staring at a few thousand dollars of compression molded clay casino chips in front of you treating them as if they had no value in the real world. The only value they have in Vegas is that they got the attention of that blonde wet dream with the ten thousand dollar bolt-ons across the room who you non-chalantly pretend not to notice but your pathetic nutsack is already off the bar stool headed her way.
I love Vegas. Where else on this planet do you stand a chance of actually beating the house AND getting laid within minutes of cashing-in at the cage? Wall Street you say? Good luck pal. Those robber barons are the only ones doing any screwing in that game. They’d rather have you believe you’re too stupid to do what they do. Which is ironic – because all they do is steal. And it’s all sanctioned by the US Government and the Harvard Business School.
Each month you go to your mailbox and stare dumbfounded at your Smith-Barney-Merrill-Lynch-Goldman-Sachs-Bear-Stearns-Now-Defunct brokerage statement wondering what all those crazy numbers mean. Exasperated, you mutter, “Oh well, I guess I’ll just let it ride.” With your masterful investment decision under foot you shove the crazy numbers statement on the bottom of the mail heap and pull out this month’s Maxim. Carmen Electra topless. Nice.
If Wall Street and Vegas used stacks of gold coins in lieu of placid statements and casino chips to represent your profit or loss in hard terms, terms you could actually see, feel, and become passionate about, sensitive to the fact that this is real, I am responsible for that stack of gold – then I’m afraid the boys from Harvard and the dealers from The Strip would have a lot tougher time separating you from your hard earned money.
I of course exaggerate when I say anyone would be dumbfounded by a 401k or brokerage statement but I say it to make this point – Wall Street and the Federal Reserve want you desensitized as to the real worth of money. The Fed doesn’t want you walking around with gold, in love with its brilliant glow and allure as a store of value. They want you walking around with meaningless, uninspired, dispassionate pieces of paper the value of which they control. Even better, they’d rather have it all digitized. What am I talking about? We’re almost there now.
When it comes to the wholesale desensitization of the public’s attachment to the underlying value of their money – this mostly overlooked strategic component is integral to Wall Street’s and the Fed’s ability to separate you from your money. It is such a benign concept that it goes completely unnoticed by an entire nation but so powerful in the hands of those who would use it to their advantage that they can rob millions, billions, and even trillions of dollars from whomever they please.
Sometimes the best way to communicate an abstract concept is to tell a story. Below is an unedited audio clip of my conversation with prop trader Greg Simmons wherein we are discussing the content of an upcoming article – and this one too. The clip is almost eleven minutes. I encourage you to listen to all of it. In doing so you will hear the story of a woman who was the eleventh employee of AOL. She was Steve Case’s personal secretary and she retired with $80 million dollars in stock options. Greg was advising her how to preserve and grow her wealth – to be sensitive of putting her wealth at risk. His strategy was sound. He had her best interests in mind. However, along came another Wall Street trader. His interest was only the money and his strategy to desensitize this woman of risk. One year later the $80 million dollar AOL woman had nothing. Listen.
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It’s a sad story. One that I’m sure victims of Bernie Madoff can empathize with. And oddly, one now that we can all relate to as we watch Wall Street and our government trample over what used to be the American dream.
The Federal Reserve does not want you to understand the nature of financial markets, credit, or money itself. The US Treasury does not want you to understand the ramifications of perpetual deficit spending and runaway national debt. And what is becoming abundantly obvious is that Wall Street doesn’t want you to understand they’re role in any of it, nor do they want you to question the notion that these masters of finance are there to grow your money – because they’re not. The Fed, the US Treasury, and especially Wall Street exist for one purpose and one purpose only – to rob you of any discretionary funds you may have lying around after you’ve covered the basic necessities of sustaining life under the economy which they control.
It is a game of wit, of cat and mouse, and of fraud disguised as trust. However, the veil of secrecy that has masked this illusion is slowly being pulled back by the ire of a disgruntled public. With every headline of corporate mismanagement, Madoff-esque frauds, and the fiscal ineptitude of our government the layers of manufactured deception are being peeled away to expose the organized financial desensitizing of an entire nation.
Finally, a 401k statement cannot be exchanged for bread at the grocery store. A brokerage account statement may as well be a roll of toilet paper. The fact of the matter is that the Fed, the US Treasury, and most of all those blood suckers of Wall Street don’t want you to ever take your money out of their game. Not out of your 401k, not out of this economy, and especially not out of their fiat money and into gold, or silver, or anything that’s real. Because if you did – how would they steal it back from you? At gunpoint?
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