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

Written March 25, 2014

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.

Welcome To Zimbabwe

WrittenJan 30, 2013

In 1979 the white Rhodesian minority lost its stranglehold on the landlocked African nation and the UNAC won the April elections. Power-sharing arrangements shifted in the coming years and Zimbabwe began a black nation on June 12, 1979. Since that time the country has been ruled by President Mugabe, who has driven the economy of the resource-rich land to ruin.

Today the country's finance minister announced to the press, "Last week when we paid civil servants there was $217 left in government coffers."

$217?

I have more in my bank, but tomorrow there might be nothing, so I understand Zimbabwe's pain, although I am ruled by the feckless foibles of Wall Street and not a demented dictator.

I don't know what is worse, but I am only one and Zimbabwe has twelve million people.

I don't even want to calculate how much $217 is when divided by that many.

Not much.

Welcome to International Write-Off Year.

Bad Debt Good - 2015

My first credit card was backed by the endorsement of Mrs. Carolina in 1995.

"An American Express for emergencies."

The southerner loved the way I kissed and visited me once a month in New York. Ms. Carolina told her husband that I was gay. His believing her mapped out a faultline in my masculinity. Ms. Caroline was blonde and beautiful. In bed there was never a need for words.

When I moved to LA in 1995 to help Scottie Taylor open the Beverly Hills' Milk Bar, I used this card to purchase pastrami sandwiches from Jerry's Deli and groceries from Trader Joe's. Three months of this ran the bill up to $1000. The week before the opening of the Milk Bar, Mrs. Carolina flew out for a road trip to Death Valley.

"I don't think I can pay that debt right now," I told her at a steak house in Lone Pine.

"Don't worry about it. You can pay me once you sell a book." Ms. Carolina liked my writing. No one in Hollywood felt the same way.

Ms. Carolina might not have cared about my insolvency and seemingly neither did the credit card companies, who issued me a playing deck of plastic from Visa and MasterCard. I was credit rich with no standing debt.

I thought I was smart juggling various new offers of 0% interest between competing companies. My limit rose with my payments. I soon was given a ceiling on $70,000 despite no visible source of income or assets other than an elephant foot in my East Village apartment. By 2001 my debt was a mere $3000.

Manageable minimal monthly payments, while I traveled back and forth to the Orient.

After moving to Thailadn in 2002y arrest by the Thai cyber police for Copyright infringement changed all that routine. I had no work for several months and lived on the cards, transferring debts back and forth like an off-shore banker, until I resumed employ at the diamond exchange.

My debt had grown to $150000.

The winter of 2002 I sold a Burma sapphire for big money and informed Richie Boy that I was heading for Thailand. I had a book to write. I was only 48. The future still ran in my favor and my English friend Sam Royalle had promised to set me up with an internet website selling F-1 copy merchandise. Leaving America seemed like a good idea, especially since my Thai girlfriend and I were expecting a baby and GW Bush was in the White House.

The credit cards paid for the birth of Angie.

MY debt rose to $25000.

I faithfully paid the increasing monthlies with the money from my sublet of East 10th Street. Apartment 3E, while my business was generating enough income to support a family of three. The problem arose when I lost my ATM card with which I withdrew funds from f1-shopping.net

Sam Royalle advised burning my credit cards to the limit.

"Never pay them back."The other other option was to take cash advances from the cards, although I didn't notice the small print of the contract stating that this move would bump my interest rate to 29%. And my debt started to balloon, so that by 2008 when the Thai police shut down my website for copyright infringement, I owed something like $120,000.

More money than I could pay back and I did the numbers. I called the credit card companies to ask for an abatement in the interest levels even though I had no income. They refused my request. I told them without this help that I would be forced into bankruptcy.

"New laws have been written to prevent that."

"Laws?" I was living in Thailand beyond the reach of America. "Could I speak with your manager?"

"He won't change a thing."

"Then I guess this is the last time we speak." I had no credit line. "Good-bye."

And like that I was free from their debts. Different creditors phone from time to time. They have purchased my note at probably 5%. Maybe less. I'm not scared of speaking to these faceless voices from the Midwest. I ask them if they are willing to reduce my principal. They refuse and demand the full balance plus interest. I explained that I'm not in a position to pay them this sum. It is 100% the truth.

I have written off this debt in my mind on my own personal write-off day.

And I have survived without a credit card thanks to throwing out my TV. No strangers tell me what to buy. My purchases are generated by necessity; food and Shelter and transportation. A few beers too. I like the buzz of being an anti-consumer of any offering of globalization.

Broke, but free.

It was a good feeling and still is.

Resist The Rich

Over 400 factory workers were murdered in Bangla Desh by the capitalist terrorism and millions are homeless around the world thanks to the class-cleansing policies of the banks. This country's pillars of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been destroyed by the rabid accumulation of wealth over the last thirty years under the free market system. There is only two courses of action. International Write-Off day and Resist the Rich.

Wild Wild Wild

Things will get out of hand on . Imagine the freedom. No debts. No old worries. Only the new. International Write-Off Day 4/1/2013

Ghost Road to Sri Racha

Back in the good old days coal miners carried canaries in a cage down into the mines, since lethal gases killed the canaries before humans. The allusion 'canaries in a cage' has been assigned to political, natural, and economic threats to our existence. Five nights ago I arrived at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport a little past midnight. The 777 from Tokyo had been packed with tourists and returning Thais, but ours was the only incoming flight and I passed through immigration within a few minutes. My bag was the first onto the carousel and I went outside to catch a taxi. The driver took Motorway 7 and maintained a steady 110 KPH on the southbound highway. Within a few kilometers I noticed that the taxi was the only vehicle on the road. There were no cars behind or before us on the normally busy highway. Trucks lined the breakdown lanes. None of this was a good sign, for a busy highway indicates a bustling economy and no matter what the present or past government has forecasted for growth, I suspect that industries on the Eastern Seaboard are suffering from the onset of the western disease ie the Great Depression. And it can only get worse, unless the governments decide to accept International Write-Off Day as the only solution to the bank's destruction of the monetary system. Someone someday had to admit that free market capitalism was a disaster. And hopefully soon, unless the lack of cars was due to the danger of zombies or khon ngoh walking the rice paddies after dark. I haven't seen any, but zombies know enough to avoid Thais. They are tougher than a bag of nails when the going gets tough.