Liberty Dollar Update

[bmielke]

Who is William Kevin Innes? Why is he a Martyr?

I probably missed the story earlier, if I did a link to the previous thread would be great.

[Thule]

Who is William Kevin Innes? Why is he a Martyr?

Got himself arrested for peddling Libbys.

http://charlotte.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/2009/ce060309.htm

[bmielke]

Who is William Kevin Innes? Why is he a Martyr?

Got himself arrested for peddling Libbys.

http://charlotte.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/2009/ce060309.htm

Thanks

[Quixote]

6. "How it Happens"
Ever wonder how hyperinflation happens on a day-by-day basis. How it impacts people's lives and how they cope with it? Well, in chapter three of my first book, Your Survival Currency, I quoted Pearl S. Buck, who lived most of her life in rural China with her missionary parents in the 1920s and 30s. She wrote terrific books that inspired may young women and became the first American woman to win a Noble Prize for literature. In an often forgotten book, How It Happens (New York, John Day, 1947) Ms. Buck interviews Erna von Pustau, a German housewife who describes her real life experiences in Germany during hyperinflation.
Buck quotes Erna von Pustau: "By the end of the year my allowance and all the money I earned was not worth one cup of coffee. You could go to the baker in the morning and buy two rolls for 20 marks; but go there in the afternoon, and the same two rolls were 25 marks. The baker didn't know how it happened. His customers didn't know how it happened. It had somehow to do with the dollar, somehow to do with the stock exchange--and somehow, maybe, to do with the Jews."
My book continues with: "Eventually, a loaf of bread cost billions of marks. Suicide was common. Women who a few years before would have thought such a thing unthinkable became prostitutes. Frau von Pustau says that Germans crazy with hunger butchered chunks of meat from the flanks of wagon horses standing in the traces. They either sold the meat or ate it on the spot."
Well with such shocking insights supplied to me by literary researcher, Alan Stang and accredited to such a literary figure as Ms. Buck, I always wanted to read her book. For years I tried to find a copy. And finally, after searching for ten years, I happen to find How It Happens on Amazon! And even though it was well $100, I was thrilled to finally score such an unusual book.
Then I was equally shocked to discover that Ms. Buck did not mention the cost of bread, prostitution or that "Germans crazy with hunger butchered chunks of meat from the flanks of wagon horses standing in the traces." I also learned the remark regarding Jews in 1923 was the first instance of propaganda by the National Socialist Party, aka Nazi.
Another insight into every day life during hyperinflation in pre WWII Germany was reported in TV Guide (August 10, 1974). The story is of the great pianist Arthur Schnabel, who gave a Beethoven recital in Berlin in 1923. He was paid with a suitcase stuffed with thousand-mark notes. Schnabel recalled, "I had to ask a man to help me carry my fee home. On my way home, I passed a delicatessen and to relieve my helper, I spent half my fee on a couple of sausages. The next day I saw in the paper that I could not even get one sausage for the other half of my fee."
Get ready, we are all headed down hill.

Huh? He discovers that Alan Stang incorrectly attributed a statement to Pearl Buck. He then learns that the passage was actually a bit of Nazi propaganda, which seems unlikely because the statement is in part about how anti-semitism is spread by confused people looking for the causes of their problems. And yet, he accepts as true the contents of the, to him at least, now discredited statement.

[Pottapaug1938]

Alan Stang is such a maroon. Back in college, I used to see the Bircher magazine in my college library, and read it for laughs. I'll never forget Stang's piece on the 1972 Democratic Convention, in which he describes, among other things, an encounter with 1960s radicals Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, who were there as journalists, covering the convention for some publication or other (although one wrote "Popular Mechanics" as his affiliation on his press pass, and the other wrote "MAD Magazine"). Stang quotes his conversation with the two at length; and anyone but a Bircher who read it would have recognized, as Hoffman later wrote, that they were "playing the dozens" with Stang -- i.e., baiting him and messing with his mind -- and Stang went for their bait like a lake trout after a juicy fly at sunrise. It was one of the best pieces of political comedy I've ever seen.

[webhick]

There is no doubt that Affolter, a well know local chef, is dedicated to silver. As he points out, "In the restaurant business, a cup is a cup.

Dude, your restaurant has cups? Paper, plastic, or sippy? Wait, you know what? It doesn't matter. It's low-rent. If I go to a restaurant, I expect my beverage to be served in a glass (even if that "glass" is made of plastic, it better at least not look like a "cup") - especially if I'm stuck paying 6-9 for an entree. Hold up, does your "restaurant" have a dollar menu? That would make better sense, although "If the rat traps were full when the shift started, you know what kind of burger we're serving today" is more suited to the industry.

I think a dollar should be a dollar and that dollar should hold its value and even increase in value as people prosper. Simply put, silver has a better shelf life than food."

If it should hold it's value and increase when people prosper, then it by all means should go down when the opposite is true. You can't have a currency whose value can only go up - it screams of "Watch me while my bottom falls out."

He is quick to point out that, "Silver is better than voting. Sound money is a more effective and positive approach to big government. It can even be profitable!"

Don't vote! Buy silver from me! I need to pay my mortgage!

So what finally pushed Affolter to take the big plunge into the silver business? It started when he wanted to buy some silver in Aspen but there were no coin dealers and only one antique store had a few old US silver dollars. With no silver available, Affolter decided to follow the old marketing adage, "find a need and fill it," and voila, the Aspen Silver Dollar was born.

I asked around town up here and I couldn't find anyone that sells hamster milk. So, I'm going to start a hamster milk farm. Hey, I have a need and it must be filled.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

Very quickly, Dr. Wesson and a dozen other Aspenites started using the Aspen Silver Dollar. The dentist, local bar, food store, car repairman have become the first local merchants to accept the new silver dollar for their goods and services.

Okay, so I get the dentist, since it was his idea. But doesn't this Peter guy own a restaurant? Where is it in that list? Is he not accepting his own currency? Unless of course, he owns the bar. At which point I would like to modify an earlier point: Dude, you serve vodka in a cup? What kind of drunks are you serving? and "bar" ne "restaurant".

Dr. Bill Wesson said, "I am very grateful that Peter took action to bring silver to Aspen. I think it is the best thing for Aspen and strongly encourage everyone to get and use the Aspen Silver Dollar for their own good and for the good of Aspen."

"Strongly encourage" summons of images of big men with bats who "strongly encourage" merchants to pay a protection fee. Only now they're carrying sacks of silver coins instead of bats.

To hear Affolter tell his story, he harkens back to the good old days when Aspen was the richest silver mining area in the world. He reminisces about how the Populist Party adopted silver as "legal tender" after the panic of 1893 - that almost killed Aspen. But Aspen never died, although it was down to only 705 residents in 1930.

So your proof that silver saved them was to take a population count from the start of the next depression? Actually, according to wiki, you just took the lowest population they had listed.

So does the new dollar cost $50? Not if you know Affolter or live in the Roaring Fork Valley area. Locals are encouraged to get the currency at a steep volume discounts and then use it for whatever value is agreed upon with the merchant. The value changes with the silver market that is on an uptrend.

Starting to sound like the Libby. I'm pretty sure that's bad.

I'd keep going, but I just can't find the energy to care. Blow me, Libby.

[fortinbras]

My recollection of early Liberty Dollar/NORFED advertising (started in 1998, mostly through Media Bypass magazine -- I have given away my copies so I am depending on my memory) was that, originally, Von NotHaus and his adherents described the LD as "currency" and even "legal tender", which it certainly is not. They also claimed it was inflation proof - which might be true in the sense that the inflation was more than taken care of in the initial sale, since von NotHaus was charging almost twice the market price for metallic silver (and considerably more than the US Mint's Silver Eagle and the Canadian Mint's Silver Mapleleaf -- both, like the LD, one troy ounce of pure silver and, unlike the LD, guaranteed and protected by public law and their respective governments). Originally, for nearly twice the price of silver, you'd get for your FRNs, a very pretty multi-color piece of paper, identifying itself as a "warehouse receipt" (a sort of coat check) for your silver LD drachma in a NORFED warehouse, with a 20 year limit from the date of issue, providing that, within those 20 years, you could redeem the silver drachma by presenting this piece of paper plus some payment for storage and handling (I would bet that extra change would definitely bring the final price of the drachma to twice - or more - the market price of the silver ingredient).

Media Bypass was somehow entwined with NORFED and the magazine had large display ads for NORFED in every issue and some puff piece in every third issue (often promoted on the cover). But one of the problems about promoting funny money is that you have to get other people to take it from you, while you avoid taking it from them. Around 1999 or 2000 Media Bypass announced it would no longer accept LDs in payment for subscriptions -- it actually said that it was "limiting" its acceptance of LDs because it wanted people to spread the LDs elsewhere. Media Bypass, around the same time, ran into some sort of serious management problems; the management changed hands and ads and even mentions of NORFED and LDs vanished utterly from its pages. Whatever the damage was, it was too far gone to salvage and the magazine closed down around 2002.

[grixit]

2. South Carolina Questions the Currency

The Act of Nullification rides again!

[grixit]

Eustice Mullins

That's "Eustace" and Nothus seems to have left out the part where Mullins puts his finger on the true source of all economic manipulations. Hint: one syllable, begins with "J".

[webhick]

Eustice Mullins

That's "Eustace" and Nothus seems to have left out the part where Mullins puts his finger on the true source of all economic manipulations. Hint: one syllable, begins with "J".

Jazz?

[Lambkin]

Eustice Mullins

That's "Eustace" and Nothus seems to have left out the part where Mullins puts his finger on the true source of all economic manipulations. Hint: one syllable, begins with "J".

Jazz?

Juice?

[Quixote]

Eustice Mullins

That's "Eustace" and Nothus seems to have left out the part where Mullins puts his finger on the true source of all economic manipulations. Hint: one syllable, begins with "J".

Jots! (Tittles are not nearly as important.)

[Pottapaug1938]

Eustice Mullins

That's "Eustace" and Nothus seems to have left out the part where Mullins puts his finger on the true source of all economic manipulations. Hint: one syllable, begins with "J".

Jets? Those football players can be such tricky devils....

[Brandybuck]

Eustice Mullins

That's "Eustace" and Nothus seems to have left out the part where Mullins puts his finger on the true source of all economic manipulations. Hint: one syllable, begins with "J".

It's the Jacobins all over again.

[The Observer]

And here I thought it might be the Jacobites. But then again neither Jacobin or Jacobite are of one syllable.

[LaVidaRoja]

Jams!

Because they are likely to find themselves in one!

[Nikki]

Juice !! Simpson is behind everything.

[Doktor Avalanche]

Jots! (Tittles are not nearly as important.)

Unless they are Salma Hayek's...........wowzers!

Indeed.

[Pottapaug1938]

Jots! (Tittles are not nearly as important.)

Unless they are Salma Hayek's...........wowzers!

... or Penélope Cruz's.

[Doktor Avalanche]

Jots! (Tittles are not nearly as important.)

Unless they are Salma Hayek's...........wowzers!

... or Penélope Cruz's.

While they are nice, Salma's got her beat. Sorry, Pottapaug.