The Three Rules of Wealth Acquisition

In a revolution traditionally the first ones against the wall are the landlords.

In our cities the only construction are luxury condos with 30% occupancy destroying whole neighborhoods by raising real estate taxes thanks to over-inflated values of empty apartments, so the elite can launder their wealth.

If you want to point fingers at why the people of the world are without money, it's because the corporation for the sake of profits are too greedy to care about anything more than the wealth cloud and the rise of stock prices. No one on the streets has any money. No one carries money. Every transaction cost 2-3% in fees to the banks.

No one complains about the .00001%, because the hoi polloi share a deluded hope that one day they might be Cronus, however the only three sources of wealth are birth, marriage, or theft. Although sports players are changing that equation as well as drug dealers. They attained their wealth through hard work.

ps Joe Biden has done a good job, except for his hand in Israel's regifting the Holocaust on Palestine. You can never get to the future by only looking in the rearview mirror.

Viva International Write-Off Day.

ps I'm a poet living off the state created by LBJ, the Great Society.

Photo by Aaron Slim

International Write-Off Day

Last month I was dining at Bar Pitti with Richie Boy, our art dealer friend Starvie, and my landlord Pollock. The restaurant on 6th Avenue was packed with stockbrokers thankful to have survived the day's mayhem. Ferraris, Land-Rovers, and Mercs weaved through the traffic, each one is more of a hurry to be somewhere else. After appetizers Richie Boy told a story about his diamond exchange being robbed for a million dollars. Seveteen years later he still thinks I did it, which is why he always hires me back to work for him selling diamonds. He thinks I'll come up with the box someday.

Our friends laughed at his loss, as I disproved his allegations. The neighboring table was rehashing the meltdown after Sunday's announcement that two of the largest banks in the world had vanished without a trace. They had opinions.

Collapse. Buy. Sell. The economy is sound. Invest in beer.

Pollock leaned over to me and acknowledged his indiscretion.

"No one knows shit."

"Certainly not me." I'd been broke since my arrest in Thailand seven ago. "But I'm willing to make a prediction."

"Which is?"

"The Dow Jones will hit 9500 by the end of the month." September had only 15 more days left. The stockbrokers on the other table had stopped speaking to hear my reasoning. "And on what do i base this forecast. A hunch. Nothing more and nothing less."

Everyone resumed their conversation, except for Richie Boy, who said, "Anyone that knows isn't saying and anyone that says doesn't know."

We all agreed to that.

International Write-Off Day 2015

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Julius Caesar returned from the conquest of Gaul and paid off the hoi polloi's debt. The rich were bribed with gold. Romans called this holiday a 'jubilee' and the common man extolled Caesar. They were no longer slaves to the upper classes, who hated Caesar for disrupting the ancient social order. Caesar thought that they were his friends, but the rich have not friends.

Still I love the idea of Jubilee.

What better than International Write-Off Day.

It's a simple idea.

No one owes anyone anything.

Imagine the freedom.

No debts.

No old worries.

Only the new.

Of course the rich will somehow come out ahead in the end, but for a few years we might be free.

International Write-Off Day

4/1/2015

I'M GOOD IF YOU'RE GOOD by Peter Nolan Smith

Opening a jewelry store in the Plaza Hotel seemed like a good idea in the Spring of 2009. I was dead broke after my arrest in Thailand for copyright infringement and my wife Mam was pregnant with our son. The Plaza was one of New York's premier destinations. Wealth was in my cards.

Richie Boy launched the store in the Retail Collection in October. I was his store manager. His two partners were supposed to supply customers and merchandise and money. We saw little of three. Mario was stealing goods to pay for his sickly son's treatments and the Iranian had been soaked by a six-figure bar mitzvah. My check was late every week and one rainy Tuesday I went over to Chase to cash my wages. A smiling bank officer was at the door.

"Can I help you?" She was wearing a trim bank suit.

"I just need to cash a check." It was for $800.

"Do you bank here?"

"No." All my bank accounts were wiped out in April. The balances were zero.

"Would you care to open an account?"

"Why not?" Normal people had bank accounts and I wanted to live a normal life.

The bank officer led me to her office. Nancy was about half my age. She treated me with respect. I filled out the forms and she entered my social security number into the computer.

"Oh."

"Something wrong." Her 'oh' had an edge to it.

"You had an account here before."

"I did." I knew what she was talking about.

"A credit card debt of over $60,000."

"Yes." I was ready to run and my hand reached to snatch my check before the doors to her office slid shut and the police arrived to drag me to debtor prison.

"Did you go bankrupt?" A frown drifted across her lips.

"Something like that." I told the bank's debt collection service that I was going to prison in Thailand and asked for an extended line of credit. They said that they weren't bail bondsmen. The phone stopped ringing after that call.

"Well, because they wrote off your debt."

"They did?" $60,000 had gone poof.

"Yes." Nancy was smiling again. "You still want to open that account?"

"Am I good?"

"Yes." She was eager to score a new customer.

"Are you good?"

"Yes." Her bosses had greenlighted my banking with Chase.

"Then I guess I'll open an account." I signed the necessary paperwork and ten minutes later walked out of Chase a new man thanks to the bank's forward-thinking policy.

International Write-Off Day is coming for us all.

It's better than Burning and Looting Day by a long shot.