An Open Letter to Robert Kiyosaki

 

In case you don’t know, Robert Kiyosaki is the author of the Rich Dad series of books on financial literacy, and he and his beautiful wife Kim are the creators of the board game called Cash Flow, a marvelous financial learning tool for young and old alike.  I am a fan of Robert Kiyosaki.  I met him and his wife in a bar in Pittsburgh, PA.  They are very genuine, down-to-earth, and friendly people.  They are for-profit educators, and they clearly have a passion for their subject.  And yes, I really believe Robert’s story about his rich dad and his poor dad.  I don’t think Rich Dad is a figment of Kiyosaki’s imagination.  So I am a believer.  I don’t make statements like that very often.  I have something to say to Mr. Kiyosaki, a disagreement I want to air with him.

Dear Mr. Kiyosaki:

If you are reading this, you already know we are kindred spirits and I admire what you do and share your commitment to financial education.  In a recent article you wrote that some of your best financial advice is to not be average.  That comment was the source of considerable outrage on the part of your readers, judging by their comments.  Perhaps they wanted your message gift-wrapped in softer language, but I couldn’t agree with you more. 

Very few people truly comprehend the mind-numbing reach and power of their government, and its insatiable appetite for their earnings and its religious zeal to dumb them down and control their lives.  Therefore they do not understand how much the odds are stacked against them in their endeavor to break free from the rat race.  They do not understand that to be average is to have no chance.

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Why the Bank Always Wins

The BIG BANKS, that is.  The Big Banks always win.  And Big Money.  R-e-a-l-l-y BIG Money always wins.  Money so big it moves around the globe swiftly and silently and at the speed of light, and you can’t even attach a name to its owners.  We’re not talking about the neighbor down the street with the new Mercedes that he is so proud of.  We are talking about money so big it can bring down governments, and prop up governments, dictate terms to governments.  We are not talking about the millionaire next door.  Nor am I talking about your lovely neighborhood bank, or even the biggest bank in your state.  I am talking about the people who decide which banks fail and which ones don’t.  I am talking about the people who allow some banks to fail so that  THEY can buy up the failed bank’s  assets with pennies on the dollar—oh, and that’s pennies on YOUR (tax) dollar, not THEIR dollar.  The politicians are their pawns, who are rewarded and punished according to their compliance and cooperation.  The only thing these people fear is, well, YOU.  You are part of the herd, and they fear the herd.  These people don’t like democracy, they don’t like the light, and they only pretend at transparency.

To read about what you can do NOW

to improve your financial literacy

and put money in your wallet

continue to the end of this article, or click here:

http://www.phoenixlogistical.com/education.html

 

Empires have always been about the control of the many by the few.  It was said that the sun never set on the British Empire, and the most amazing feat of the British Empire is that it controlled so much of the earth’s surface with the tiniest of military garrisons and outposts scattered around the globe.  In most of those places, if the local populace had risen up against them, the tiny British garrisons would easily have been overrun and sent packing.  They had the greatest navy in the history of the world, but no navy could have kept them safe everywhere, and especially inland.  The secret of their superiority was the quality of their information.  They knew the value of information; they knew that information was power.  The maintenance of power required keeping the masses in ignorance.  And as long as the masses could be fed, amused, and kept poor, nothing would ever change.  It was important to keep the masses poor, because that kept them too busy and too tired to interest themselves in anything other than the tyranny of survival.  And the purpose of empire was to extract wealth from far flung lands and bring it home to a privileged few.

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The Global Poker Playoffs: a short story about Money Supply

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the godfather of modern banking, purportedly said “Give me control of a nations money supply and I care not who makes the laws.”  What did he mean by that?  Is it true?  Since the Federal Reserve Bank controls the money supply of the United States as the world’s largest and most influential Central Bank, does this mean that this institution is more powerful than Congress, more powerful than the Executive Branch of the government, that it operates above and beyond the control of the Republicans or Democrats?  Is the Federal Reserve above the law?  Was Rothschild right?  What exactly is the money supply, anyway?

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Why the Federal Reserve Exists

Here we go with the vocabulary thing again.  I promise to make this easier than your last root canal.  The Federal Reserve Bank is a central bank.  Central banks are created to control and manipulate the money supply.  The money supply is the aggregate total of all the money in circulation in an economy.  It is often referred to in the media and the industry as M.  Controlling the money supply frees governments from the responsibility of living within their means.  It makes it possible for them to counterfeit money.  All governments have laws making counterfeiting their currency illegal.  That is because all governments have a monopoly on counterfeiting and do not tolerate competition in the business.

Governments counterfeit money in the exact same way all counterfeiters do; they print it, and slip it into circulation into the economy.  They spend it.  They spend more money than the economy produces because they do not want to live within their means.  They do not want to live within their means because they use money to buy votes.  They give out goodies in return for favors; favors in the form of legislation that promotes the welfare of one group over another group; favors that line their individual pockets, reward their friends, punish their enemies, and above all, favors that get them re-elected.

Other reasons are given, of course, for the existence of the Fed.  But it is axiomatic that all governments seek continual expansion of their powers, and control of the public purse and the power to tax is the Holy Grail for power seekers.  The founding fathers of this country feared government more than anything, and the Constitution they framed was to protect us, not from foreigners, and not from each other, so much as from our elected government itself.  The debates about economic policies are a sideshow and a distraction; the main event is the relentless expansion of executive power and the quiet transfer, not only of wealth, but of personal liberties as well.  Without economic freedom based on individual rights, private property, and the right to keep and dispose of our earnings as we choose, there is no freedom at all. Read more..

Financial Literacy: Why Governments Secretly Like Inflation

The dirty secret of all governments is that contrary to popular opinion, they do not hate inflation.  All governmental corruption begins when they discover the power of the purse, and that they can use the public purse to perpetuate their power, privilege, and benefits.  Over time all legislators and power brokers arrogate to themselves the means to stay in office and the luxuries it affords at the general taxpayer’s expense.  So of course we hear how the purpose of the Federal Reserve and Congress is to maintain a strict control over inflation, that the Fed is independent of the government, and that it is immune to political influence.  At best this is a Trojan horse.  Inflation is the primary tool used by every government to live beyond its means, and by its “means” we mean its ability to tax.  For taxation is the Achilles heel of all governments, for carried to excess it inspires armed revolution and fall from power.  Governments raise taxes at their peril.  Inflation, however, is a hidden tax, for it is how the government spends and borrows beyond its ability to repay.  By printing money and increasing credit, thereby increasing the money supply, the government creates inflation.  How does this happen?

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Financial Literacy: How Fractional Reserve Banking Multiplies the Money Supply

One of the reasons why so few people show an interest in economics is that in today’s world the subject is complex and defies simplistic definitions.  But that is so true of much of our modern society.  It is not uncommon these days for older folks to refuse to learn e-mail and to shake their heads in wonderment at their grandchildren deftly manipulating electronic hand-held games totally beyond the grasp of their elders.  What IS of grave concern is the fact that the achievements of our scientists and engineers have aided and abetted the dumbing down of successive generations.  We have heard much of the income gaps in our society; we hear much less about the widening chasm between the educational level of the designers and engineers of our world and the end-users of our world.  Not to mention the grade inflation of our educational system.  Hence we sometimes find students in Advance Placement who still cannot read and write well.  I would be remiss in my duty to you, my reader, to imply that you can understand the economic world you live in without effort.  There are times when you will still have to reach for the dictionary, and hopefully you have several in your home, and even more hopefully, they are well worn and used!  Or more likely, you have an online dictionary marked as a favorite.  Even though I exert considerable effort to simplify and clarify an otherwise arcane and difficult subject, I would suspect that my articles have little appeal to those addicted to instant gratification.  I simply do not know how to reduce some concepts to a sound byte level.  Take for example, the concept of the money supply. 

The money supply is a very important concept with those entrusted with the well-being of our macro-economy (the BIG picture).  There are, for example, endless arguments among economists about what properly constitutes the money supply.  We’ll skip most of that stuff and stick to essentials.  Let’s start with the fact that in the profession and in the media, the money supply is referred to as M.  Yep, that’s it, M as in Mickey Mouse, Mars bars, or of course, M&Ms.  To me, the latter connotes Money and Masochism, which sort of go together.  Of course, economists talk of M1, M2, M1a, etc.  That is largely to impress us.  Or maybe to impress themselves.  It has absolutely no effect on the accuracy of their predictions.    But it seems to be a requirement imposed upon all financial advisors and analysts to use jargon composed of largely a minimum of four or more syllables per word to convince us that, like all priesthoods, they know what we cannot possible grasp with our feeble minds.  But let us bravely press on . . .

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Why Democracy Isn’t Enough

Human beings are a tribal species, and like most of the lower species on this planet, they prefer to travel in herds.  Truly free thinkers have always been a desperate minority, and it has been the unfortunate destiny of such individuals to periodically carry the world forward on their backs, often having to apologize for their discoveries, recant their theories under torture, or have their earnings plundered by their inferiors.  In a world culture based on the nonsensical concept that all men are created equal, these individuals have broken from the herd in their thinking, transcended commonly accepted “truths” and challenged the orthodoxy of the day.  Their discoveries and powers of production have done exponentially more to raise the standard of living  the world  over than the efforts of all the hand-wringing social planners of the planet combined.  The politicians of the world would have nothing to redistribute were it not for the outstanding minds and abilities of these scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.  To say that these persons are only the equals of the hordes who benefit from their exceptional minds can only be called the triumph of ideology over reality. Read more..

Why We Believe: The Power of Utopia, Part II

 

In Part I of this article, I discussed how people are vulnerable to belief when they are unhappy or unsatisfied, and most people are one or the other most of the time.  In times of dramatic change, people are scared, insecure, and eager for anything that promises certainty.  Unsure of themselves, they are quick to follow any Confidence Man or Group who exudes a high level of certainty and self-assurance, whether the facts warrant it or not (and they usually don’t).  When the Confidence Man (or Group) also promises some form of utopia that people want, and if that Utopian suggests that the crowd can have what they want by taking it from someone else, few will resist that temptation.  Such plunder is always camouflaged in language of some form of altruism, of everyone sacrificing or giving up for the common good.  Such behavior is successful because historically, for millennia property existed by permission, not by right, and it was usually acquired by military acquisition, not by trade.  Those who actually produced economic values were viewed as serfs, as socially inferior to those who controlled their products by force.  In addition to this historical emphasis on property acquired by force and kept by permission, feudal society viewed the tribe, not the individual, as the core unit of society.  So when we moved to the Industrial Revolution, property earned was considered the property of the group, or tribe, rather than the individual.  The prevailing philosophy has been one of altruism, meaning that the individual was expected to give up some part of his earnings, without compensation, to the tribe.  Although technology has changed dramatically, we still cling to these ancient paradigms. Read more..

Why We Believe: The Power of Utopia! Part I

About ten years ago I was asked to give a speech about the power of cults, largely because I had been raised almost from infancy as a Jehovah’s Witness, a religious organization often associated in the public’s mind with cultism.  Some of the hallmarks of cultism are a need for certainty, a conviction that you have absolute truth and are the final authority on that truth, and repression of dissent.  Some cults exercise a physical control of their members, but most of them exert a psychological control.  A true believer is someone who no longer needs coercion or physical restraint, but who now acts as if those restraints are still in place.  I can best compare it to training a guard dog; you use a choke collar with such consistency that eventually you remove the choke collar from the neck of the dog and he is so conditioned that he continues to act as if the choke collar is still there.  When, in my thirties I left this organization, I was eager to embrace a society of intellectually free people, and I was excited about the prospect of associating with others with open, inquiring minds.  I was astonished to find so much more of what I had just abandoned, only worse:  People who were born into freedom, and yet who both abused and despised it.  Read more..

Did Capitalism Fail?

The global economic crisis now in play is being universally touted as the failure and collapse of capitalism.  The cover of the February 16, 2009 edition of Newsweek ecstatically proclaimed “WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW”.  The documented collapse of Wall St. institutions and international banking is being gleefully interpreted as the failure of capitalism itself.  In the furious debate that has ensued, the arguments for and against capitalism have focused entirely on the causes of various recent economic phenomena, such as Wall St. greed, the failure of regulators, the incompetence of one or another administration, and the complexity of derivatives that were both unheard of and technically impossible only twenty years ago.  All of them have totally missed the point.  Capitalism has not failed, because capitalism was not practiced to begin with.  Pure capitalism has never been practiced because it is philosophically unacceptable in our culture.  What is called capitalism today is a hybrid political philosophy so filled with contradictions, it is unable to defend itself.  To answer the question in the title of this article, we have to begin at the beginning. Read more..