Confidence Games

How to Spot and Avoid Frauds

One of my favorite series bloggers sarahnity has a weekly series at Daily Kos called “Frugal Fridays” that offers different tips and ideas every week, by her and a number of volunteer authors, on how to make your money go farther, how to earn money on the side, and how to hang on to what you’ve got. Last Friday the theme was frauds and scams geared toward those being most harmed by the current economy, entitled Don’t Get Fooled Again.

I’m just going to list the major confidence games going around in recent weeks/months, and the several resources and good advice offered to help people determine if something’s on the up-and-up or just more grifters targeting the weak to make themselves strong. The series is awesome, definitely worth bookmarking by all readers of this blog and checked every Friday afternoon for the latest in resources for the frugal.

The major scams making the rounds these days - particularly via the internet - are sometimes old and sometimes new. There’s the standard Work from Home sting where you have to pay to find out who’s hiring. If someone wants your money before showing you the want ads, it’s likely a scam. Real employers aren’t looking for you to pay them, they’re seeking people to pay for good work.

Then there’s the new-ish trick of Facebook identity theft where a clever grifter assumes an identity from among your networking ‘friends’ (often a relative) to beg for money. Be suspicious if someone on your Facebook page suddenly asks for money. Often the real person knows nothing about it - so check on regular email before sending anything.

There are also property tax scams going around where someone tells you you’re paying too much for property recently devalued. All you have to do is send money and the scammers won’t do anything for you. These can come in the regular mail too, so always do your homework and check with your real property tax officials about what’s what. If you really do pay too much, they’ll let you know for free. In line with this there are also housing and mortgage frauds, where someone offers you a “special rate” to refinance, take your money and disappear. Don’t fall for it.

There are more, of course. Please click on Sarah’s linked diary and check them out, there is good advice on how not to be victimized and who to report suspected scams to in your state and locality.

“Managing the Economy”

During the Presidential campaign in the late summer of 2008, a Reuters/Zogby poll returned the finding that most Americans - as in 89% of likely voters - somehow believe that one of the primary responsibilities of the President of the United States is to “manage the economy.” In that poll 49% of likely voters rated John McCain as more able in that department, while 40% said Barack Obama would be better.

Surely that odd finding is another consequence of asking the wrong question the wrong way, so perhaps more than 11% of likely voters are fairly aware that the POTUS doesn’t manage the economy as part of his (or someday maybe, her) job description. but judging from how little (and poorly taught) civics is included in a public school general education these days, maybe this misconception is just that widespread.

As Gene Healy wrote at the time in The Cult of the Presidency…, “Our system, with its unhealthy, unconstitutional concentration of power, feeds on the atavistic tendency to see the chief magistrate as our national father or mother, responsible for our economic well-being, our physical safety, and even our sense of belonging.”

Continue reading »

Economic Meltdown: IMF Involvement?

For a great many regular hard-working, tax-paying American citizens the way money works in the modern world is very much a mystery. This is not surprising, considering that money has always been a mystery shrouded in mythical associations, psychological phobias and religious overtones. And designed to be thus by those who do know how money works. When the US Federal Reserve was established in 1913, it was not actually made a National Bank under the control of the government, it was established by and for the wealthiest bankers and Wall Street barons as an independent entity with only ceremonial ties to the federal government.

In a critique of the ancient psychological “money complex” in his book >Life Against Death, Norman O. Brown explored the debt-guilt association in the essay Filthy Lucre. Brown wrote, “Whatever the ultimate explanation of guilt may be, we put forward the hypothesis that the whole money complex is rooted in the psychology of guilt.”

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that a development in late June of 2008 that rocked the American financial world went largely unreported in this country. It appeared in an article of Spiegel Online on June 26, 2008, entitled The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve.

Continue reading »

Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

The news these days is chock full of dramatized street theater as the “haves” fight about ridiculous things like super-bonuses for AIG grifters, amazing world-class ponzi money-laundering schemes, and how we on the low end of the totem pole get to pay through the nose (as usual) to bail these crooks out. At this point it’s not even a partisan fight, it’s just rich versus poor. As usual. We who have been actually harmed by these interminable games of economic Risk are just trying to survive with the basics - food, clothing and shelter.

While I hope that anyone who regularly reads this blog has already bought their seeds and planted their ‘taters, there are things we usually have to purchase - or trade for - because we don’t produce our own at home. Sure, it doesn’t take more than a quarter acre of yard to keep a fresh milk goat or half a dozen chickens who give us eggs for free, but often people will be unable to even do that much. Keeping that goat fresh requires breeding once a year, and then you’ve got to either deal with a smelly billy goat or transport to where the smelly billy goat is standing stud. And what about the kid? That’s something my family could never quite conscience (these youngsters, if not also female, are usually slaughtered for meat). And don’t let anybody fool you. Those chickens CAN fly (sorta). At least to get over the fence into your neighbor’s yard.

If you are lucky enough to still have a roof over your family’s heads, there are ways to save a great deal on foods you can’t produce in your garden but need to keep everyone healthy and satisfied. Nothing makes us feel wealthier than a truly fine and healthy diet. Plus, that alone can save us multi-thousands in chronic diseases we really don’t have to get in the first place. The first of these is to join a local CSA. With this membership, which is critical to purchase right now if you can, you get a portion of the crops and products of local farmers near your home. Even if you garden, this can help fill out the take so you’ve got more to work with. Buying local directly supports your local farmers, and helps them to purchase the seeds and equipment they need to keep on producing.

Continue reading »

Feeding Your Family on $1.50 per meal

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports its latest unemployment figures as of January 2009 as 7.6% of the workforce, compared to 7.2% in December of 2008. We all know that jobs are being lost by the hundreds of thousands across the nation. We also know that these statistics account only for those workers who file and are eligible to receive unemployment benefits. Which makes the real unemployment figures at least twice as high, now more than 15%. That’s definitely edging into ‘Depression’ territory, and there will be no let-up any time soon.

Whether or not you qualify for unemployment benefits - which aren’t enough to pay the mortgage for most people - if you are out of work you and your family probably qualify for food stamps, or what is now termed by USDA as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP]. The Social Security Online website also has good information about eligibility for food stamps, and we most certainly hope that readers of this weblog aren’t too proud to make good use of this program if they find themselves in need. You may hope that another good job will soon be offered, but don’t let your family go hungry in the meantime. DO something!

Continue reading »

The Psychology of Color-Coded Credit

Despite the ever-worsening economic collapse, the almost complete unavailability of credit, and the oughtta be illegal raising of credit card interest rates to usurious levels, most of us are still getting the usual 3 or 4 Super-Duper Gold-Plus 0% APR credit card offers per week. I’m still getting them, and I don’t even have any credit!

They’ve been building up in the trash portion of my filing system for over a month now, so I thought I’d go through them all at once for one last laugh before using them as fire-starter in the wood stove. Almost immediately I was struck by the clever marketing gimmick of making this credit card or that one sound super-exclusive on the basis of the color of the plastic.

Continue reading »

Linkies: For Fun, Football and Profit

For those of us on the short end of the recent and ongoing mass looting of the economy by the kind of ant-populist robber barons who make Jesse and Frank James seem like do-gooders The Hardy Boys, there is now a historical record of the Fortune 500 CEO Hall of Shame in what could be printable trading cards outlining the shameful accomplishments of the Worst of the Worst.

Check out the card for Lehman Brothers’ Richard Fuld, whose stats list a total loss of $29 billion, while his personal take for the efforts comes in at a cool $71.9 million. Look at that punum… does he look suspiciously like a lizard? Then there’s Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo, with a face only a mother (or a Sicilian Don) could love. Stats: in the loss column, a total of $22 billion. It’s the personal take that’s truly impressive - $225.7 million. This guy was good at being bad!

So if you’re overdue for an out-loud chuckle in the midst of economic meltdown designed to do the most amount of serious harm to the most number of honest, hard-working citizens, don’t miss this offering by BusinessPundit. It’s well worth the waste of card stock and color toner.

Continue reading »

Kids Heading for College? Good Luck With That.

Even way back last August, before the economy was officially in terminal free fall, the issues surrounding a college education were in the news. CNN Money asked, Is college still worth the price?

Most of us have come to understand how necessary a college degree - in anything - is to being able to ’successfully’ compete in today’s complicated modern world. Yet the costs of a degree - any degree - is soaring up to four times the rate of inflation even as both jobs and salaries for college graduates are shrinking. How much sense does it really make for families (or students, via loans) to pay $200,000 for a degree so s/he can get a job that pays $30,000 a year or less?

In a rational economy the rapid inflation of college tuition would slow, stop or even reverse as consumers - the pool of applying students - shrank in response to the spiraling costs. But for this particular commodity, there can be no shortage of applicants due to the recognized importance of said degree to the entire future of the prospective student. It is much easier to replace light bulbs and take public transportation to work in order to save on electric bills and gasoline than it is to forego a college education because it costs more than a graduating student can expect to earn.

Continue reading »