Monday, February 15, 2010


America could be called a country of Gs. At first we were Great and God-fearing. Now we are Greedy, Gullible and Godless. Our Greed and Gullibility has predisposed us to the so-called Ponzi schemes. This is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors from their own money or money paid by \subsequent investors rather than from actual profits earned. This requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors to keep the scheme going and will eventually collapse because of its own weight because the earning are less than the payments to investors.

Bernie Madoff had the most colossal scheme in history that was exposed when the decline in the economy caused investors to want their funds that turned out not to be there. More recently, Texas billionaire, Robert Sanford, had an 8 billion dollar scheme going when he fraudulently peddled high-yielding CDs . These CDs were in his off-shore bank and the yield wasn’t there so he is now in jail for fraud and robbing folks of millions of dollars.

Folks are just greedy and gullible. The message is to beware of something that sounds to good to be true. Smart folks are the easiest to fool and other groups such as fundamentalist Christians, who will believe anything, are suckers for the schemes. These schemes are most easily perpetrated by those with a similar background to the victim such as Jews to Jews, Christians to Christians and Rednecks to Rednecks. Rednecks don’t usually have the money to invest

The name Ponzi comes from Charles Ponzi who became famous for using this technique in 1920. His scheme had to do with international reply coupons for postage stamps where he diverted investors money to support payments to earlier investors and his own personal wealth.

Another name for all this is con games. Pyramid schemes are also a type of Ponzi scheme. Medicine is full of con artist and charlatans of all types. I have always had concerns about chiropractic medicine. Patent medicines that line the shelves in the grocery store are usually worthless and are a type of con. There is little proof that the herbal drugs do any good. All this falls into the category of cons and fraud.

Anyway, I’m not going to invest in any of these schemes since all my money is now going to the electric bill to keep the porch warm. Just beware of anything that sounds to good to be true. It may be another Madoff or Sanford.

1 Comments:

Blogger jeff ludwick said...

Sadly enough the biggest and most damaging Ponzi of all time is the U.S. Congress. They make Madoff look like a petty crook. It has been decades since a bill went through Congress without pork, graft and sleeze. Even the tax bills all often called the "tax REFORM act" of whatever but are so bullet riddled by lobbyists that they are never what they start out to be. Doc, you should start some kind of Ponzi scheme where people bring you one deer and you give them ten in return! There may not be money in it but a lot of relief.....

7:41 AM  

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