WELCOME TO THE PROBLEM SHOP

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS

COME ON DOWN !!!!

By : Mr. G. William Elender, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Problem Shop Cooperative Ltd. (a Delaware Corporation).

Isn't it about time that you stopped living a stress-free life? Haven't you had enough tranquility and happiness? Are you bored with contentment? Do your friends make you feel like an outcast because you don't have any problems? Do people ridicule you for having it too easy?

It's a New Year. It's your time to change. Here at the Problem Shop, you can complicate your life as much as you want for the lowest prices in town. No matter how much difficulty you want, we sell it. We offer convenient financing and easy-to-find retail locations. If you want a problem, look no further: Come to the Problem Shop TODAY!

Don't be afraid to get some problems. Many people think that it is smart to avoid problems. They are wrong. Problems make us stronger. They make us react more quickly to unfamiliar situations. And that sharpness translates into success in family, careers and money. Ask any successful man and he'll tell you the same thing: You need to face adversity before you make it to the top. Life is not a bowl of cherries. You need to have problems to really distinguish yourself.

We understand that it is difficult to know where to begin. Purchasing your first problem is a major life decision. You can't just rush into a problem, nor can you buy a problem that is too big. You need a problem to suit your needs and your personality. True, some people are born with problems. Some people have problems the moment they leave the womb, like deformed children. But not all of us can be so lucky. For those who need problems later in life, you can exercise your own judgment before deciding what problem you want. It's an individual choice. And we're here to help.

Before buying a problem, you must ask yourself what you hope to gain from it. Do you want to learn financial discipline? Do you want to make yourself into an honorable person? Do you want to understand others? Do you want to evolve as a person? Do you want to learn how to be kind or cruel? Every problem will shape you in ways you never thought possible. When choosing a problem, it's all in your hands. Our trained staff is ready to help you make the best choice for your needs--and your budget.

First-time problem buyers should start slow. Here at the Problem Shop, we want our customers to get only the problems they want--and only the problems they can handle. Although it would benefit us to sell you the biggest, most expensive problem on the shelf, we know it would not benefit you. In that light, we care about you. We do not want to sell heroin addiction, mental illness or terminal disease to a bright-faced young college student. Nor do we want to sell paraplegia to a 15-year-old. These are expensive problems. They are hard to handle. We would prefer to sell them to older folks who already have some experience dealing with problems.

So come on in for a free consultation. If you've never had a problem before, talk to us. We can offer you heartbreak following a kiddie crush for only $19.95. Or perhaps debt collection letters for a small bill, again for only $19.95. Parental abuse is a bit more expensive at $24.95, but you might learn more from a parent's fists than a debt collector's incessant phone calls. But that's why we are here: We are here to provide information to help you make the most intelligent decision you can about the problems you want in your life.

Once you've experimented with minor emotional and financial problems, you can graduate to more serious ones. Our "second-tier" problems will really build your character. Your friends will never ridicule you again if you purchase a home foreclosure for $49.95 or an eviction for $54.95. They might even have pity on you. If you are really feeling adventurous, you might even buy a moderately-severe health problem, such as Crohn's Disease, for just $59.99. Or you could try a serious emotional problem, such as divorce, starting at just $74.99. Acrimonious divorces--complete with court battles, custody fights, mutual recriminations, physical abuse and death threats--are more expensive; we recommend purchasing a simple divorce before experimenting with an acrimonious one.

We run the best problem retail outlet in town. We are so certain that our problems are better than our competitors' that we will match anyone's price. If you buy a stalker for $12.99 at any of our competitors' stores, we will match that price. PLUS we'll throw in an additional problem. With us, you will not just get a stalker for your money. You will get heartache following a child's death--a $9.99 value--ABSOLUTELY FREE. That's right, you heard it. ABSOLUTELY FREE. Here at the problem shop, we will not be undersold. We take problems seriously. To show you how much we care, we even GIVE AWAY free problems. We are committed to our customers.

At the Problem Shop, we not only offer the lowest prices. We also sell only top-quality problems. Sure, our competitors might sell bargain paternity suits for $49.99. But our paternity suits are much better. With us, you not only get the agony of court process, wage garnishment, arguments with your former lover and wrangling with police officers over money. You also get the added difficulty of having to prove that you are not the child's father--and failing in that quest. Our competitors offer simpler problems. Their paternity suit is too easy. With us, you get the basic problem PLUS emotional, financial and health complications. Who else can offer that? When you're buying a problem, you deserve all the little problems that come along with it. Don't settle for less.

So what are you waiting for? Haven't you had enough ease in your life? Step up to the plate and buy some problems. Be a man. Stop living for enjoyment and comfort. Show that you can handle adversity, too. Grow as a person, will you? Get off that couch and buy a debilitating accident for just $149.99. Show that you can get over the emotional turmoil that flows from losing a limb for just $159.99. Lose a parent for a special introductory price of only $99.99. Suffer unjust persecution and racial hatred for $199.99. Get some real problems and grow as a person.

No one will remember the guy who sits around in comfort. They will remember the guy who faced unimaginable difficulty and survived. If you act NOW we will even sell you a DOUBLE PROBLEM for one low price, such as our special Marital Betrayal/Homicide package or Sexual Dysfunction/Suicidal Depression combo.

Stop waiting. Buy some problems TODAY. Don't let our pricing scare you away. We offer competitive financing to all those who apply. There are no credit checks. There are no hidden fees. There are no contracts. There is no obligation. There is no "catch."

At the Problem Shop, we have a simple philosophy: Everyone who wants a problem should get one, regardless of their ability to pay. If you act NOW we will sweeten the deal even more. Starting TODAY, we offer zero-percent interest financing through 2014. That means you can buy sudden spousal disability with a lifetime homecare commitment TODAY for NO MONEY DOWN. No, you didn't imagine it. We meant what we said: NO MONEY DOWN. You won't owe us a dime for your problem until 2014. This is not a joke. Act TODAY and we'll even throw in a collector's edition coffee mug featuring the words "YOU THINK YOU GOT PROBLEMS?" ABSOLUTELY FREE (that's an $8.99 value).

So do yourself a favor. Start thinking about yourself for once. Don't be afraid. Come on down to the Problem Shop and pick out the problem that is right for you. Our friendly, professional sales team is ready to assist you. You can do so much with your life; we have a problem to match every lifestyle. It is never too early to complicate your existence. It is never too early to start worrying and suffering. Here at the Problem Shop, we can guide you in the right direction. We offer every imaginable life problem. If you want to be un-friended by a love interest on a dating website, we've got you covered. If you want to find out you have cancer, we've got you covered. You name the problem; we deliver.

At the Problem Shop, no problem is too little. We can sell it to you at an affordable price, every time. We even offer FREE SHIPPING!

Stop making excuses. Stop being happy. It's time for some problems. It's time for some challenges. You need adversity in your life. You want to grow as a person, don't you? And you want that free coffee mug, don't you?

BE BACK TOMORROW

Today I had to attend to some pressing administrative nonsense. It wasn't that important; it just took a lot of time and it cost me my writing time. Oh well; these things happen once in a while. If I don't square them away, I usually get angry letters from property owners who threaten me with various civil remedies because they didn't get their $34.20 on time. Hey, I don't want to deny a creditor the time-value of his loaned money, now do I? That wouldn't be very nice.

I will be back tomorrow to write the satire I wanted to write today. Not to give too much away, but it will involve Tiger Woods and everyone's favorite Russian Prime Minister.

See you tomorrow!

Oesterhoudt

I OPT OUT FROM EVERYTHING

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

Two weeks ago, a student loan creditor (I have many) sent me a letter. It was basically a computer-generated message disclosing some vapid stuff about interest rates, new policies, a self-righteous-sounding commitment to green issues, contact information and other gibberish. But vacuous as it was, it still took up eight whole printed pages. I think it even mentioned the bank's "concern" about the "financial crisis;" yet it did not provide any debt relief. To help borrowers cope with these "difficult times," the bank suggested "paperless statements" and even went so far as to open a telephone payment center for "borrower convenience."

What generosity! Who knew the bank cared about me so much that it offered a new way for me to pay my existing debt! Wow, I feel so loved!

But this wasn't the most important thing in the bank's eight-page letter. The most important thing lay buried somewhere in the fine print on page six or seven, I can't remember which: A "Voluntary Opt-Out Provision." Essentially, it said that the bank "shares information about me" with "affiliated and non-affiliated entities" in order to provide "more effective financial services products" and to "offer better opportunities for consumers (like me) to enjoy financial services products."

In other words, the bank was telling me that it tells every other bank about me so those banks can bombard me with unfair loan offers, credit card applications and (naturally) look into my "personal credit score" to determine whether I am a "responsible commercial actor." Thanks to this "Voluntary Opt-Out Provision," however, the bank said I could FORBID them from sharing anything about me with any other bank, "affiliated" or not. I just had to check a couple boxes, sign my name, get a stamp and send in the page to some god-forsaken "processing center" in Nebraska.

I opted out, signed my name and mailed the form to Nebraska quicker than you can say: "Would you like capitalized interest with your loan, sir?"

When it comes to frustrating banks, I'm all over it. The "Voluntary Opt-Out Provision" gave me a chance to stop a bank from making even more profits from my debt. It gave me a chance to wield some power--however insignificant--to prevent the bank from exploiting my economic inferiority for even more gain. The bank already has a lien on my financial lifeblood. They get enough. It sickens me to know that they can make even more from me by selling off my name and address to other banks who just want to do the same thing to me. Generally, the bank holds all the cards over me. When I get a chance to tell the bank "No," I take it, even if it doesn't really change anything. I like knowing that I can strike back once in a while, even if only symbolically.

I know that banks are important. They lend money, which encourages private enterprise and risk-taking. That, in turn, increases the amount of goods and services in a free market economy, blah blah blah. But I don't care about all that. All I know is that I had to assume virtually unending debt to (drumroll, please) learn about contracts, torts, corporate law and civil procedure. I don't regret my legal education. I just think the bank winds up getting a lot more from the relationship than I got. After all, the bank sent a check or two to help me pay my tuition over three years. In return, the bank got a legal right to demand cash from me every month until the year 2036. By that time--if I'm still alive, which I doubt--I will have paid ten times as much as I received in 2003-2006.

Is this fair? Does it matter? The law certainly doesn't think so. The law calls such results "informed commercial bargaining in a free market system." I call it pure economic tyranny. But I'm a radical and I have no power. Plus I signed a paper and the law favors the bank. So the bank wins.

Banks get away with everything. Few things arouse my cynicism as much as banking practices. Even the concealed "Voluntary Opt-Out Provision" shows how much banks hoodwink people. After all, banks assume they can share information about you with their profit-hungry partners-in-finance. They assume you don't know you have a right to opt out. So they conceal an "opt-out" provision in some long, boring letter that most people will simply throw away without reading. That lets them just get on with "business as usual," namely, peddling off your identity to other banks for a fee. When you are in debt, banks have you by the throat. They control the information you receive and sell everything they know about you. If it weren't for Democrats in Congress, you'd never even have the illusory right to opt out from squalid "information-sharing" like this. If banks got their way, you'd never know about their "secondary market" for "borrower information." But banks get around your rights easily enough; they just bury them in fine print and claim "they sent you a letter about it." Getting around laws is easy; you just need to read them.

Debt is a pernicious relationship. Banks exploit the relationship to the fullest. I have friends who recoil in horror when they hear about all the insolent little things that banks do to "screw them," like charging "overdraft fees," "stocking fees," "late fees" and "extra interest charges." They wonder how such unfairness is possible. Without shrugging, I explain that banks get away with everything because they can. It is very simple, actually. Before a bank lends money, you must sign a contract it wrote. That contract essentially empowers the bank to do anything it wants to you after you take the money. The common law evolved to vindicate the rights of creditors--like banks--against debtors. Fairness has little to do with it. Once the bank establishes its debt relationship with you, it assumes a massively superior position. It can knock you about with legal impunity. It can charges any fees it wants. After all, you took its money. From the law's perspective, that entitles the creditor to take virtually any liberty with the debtor. Prostitutes can't complain about mistreatment after receiving a patron's money, either. Like a whore's patrons, banks pay; and they play.

I don't even know who my creditors are anymore. When I started law school, I had to borrow from several lenders. This was the only way for me to cobble together the amount I needed. I had four separate banks. Since then, a few of those banks sold off their accounts to other banks. A few others changed their names or merged with other banks. I sometimes got letters about these changes. But sometimes I didn't. I had nothing to say about it. The banks just sold off my debt like an old shoe, leaving me wondering to whom I actually now owed money. Sometimes a new bank would threaten me with collection action because I didn't send payment to the right place. I would call and stay on hold for 90 minutes in order to say I didn't know they were my creditors now. Then, a year later, that bank would sell my account to another bank and I'd have to repeat the procedure. If my credit goes to hell, it won't be because I didn't pay my monthly tribute to the bank. It will be because the bank shuffled my debt to someone else, and I didn't get the message.

Yet sometimes I face bright moments. "Voluntary Opt-Out Provisions" represent such a "bright moment" in my endless scuffles with creditors. In the usual case, I am a worthless maggot in the bank's eyes, a despicable "account." I am not "Balthazar Oesterhoudt," the man who writes a satirical blog every morning and tries to fend off bills. I am "file number 5670-AC," an "account receivable" worth $413.28 per month until 2036. In short, I am inferior. The bank can squash me if I fail to pay. It can obliterate my credit rating and garnish everything I own. It can even break out the moral invective and call me an "irresponsible delinquent," even though it has no real authority to morally judge me. In the usual case, the bank gets to toss me around, scold me, take my money and do whatever else it pleases.

Yet in "bright moments," I get to say "Fuck off" to the bank--and get away with it. When I opt out, I assert my own power against the bank, maggot that I am. I might be a mere "account receivable" to the bank, but when I opt out from its "information sharing programs," I deny the bank a profit from selling my name and address to some other bank. That is oddly satisfying. After all, the bank is already making a hefty profit on me every month. It is accustomed to taking my money and even making a few extra dollars by selling my information to credit card companies. It is accustomed to doing what it wants with me. But when I opt out, I get to say: "No. You can't do whatever you want with me. Now I get to assert my own power over you. I hereby stop you from using me for your own gain."

This probably makes no difference at all. But I do it anyway simply to show that I am Balthazar Oesterhoudt, not just an "account receivable." I like the idea that I can say I am not for sale, no matter what the bank thinks.

When it comes to unfair power relationships, I OPT OUT. Banks can devour my property, but they'll never break me.

Two years ago, I learned that there is more to life than property and bodily comfort. If you understand that, there is nothing a bank can do to hurt you.

THE HAPPY PAWNBROKER : "WHY I LOVE SECURITY INTERESTS"

By : Mr. George F. Schwender, B.S. (1984), Kankakee Community College (Financial Administration magna cum laude); High School Diploma (1980), Sheboygan Crossing High School (Prize for Excellence in Arithmetic); Owner, The Milwaukee, La Crosse & Rockford Loan Company, Inc.; Member, The American Pawnbrokers’ Union (1988-2004); Editor, I Like Loans Magazine (1990-present); Unmarried; Millionaire.

I have a good life. I am a pawnbroker and I am happy. People say that pawnbrokers are nasty parasites who prey on others’ misfortunes. They say that pawnbrokers profit from others’ misery and hard times. They say that pawnbrokers cannot love or experience happiness because they mercilessly track down debtors and sell off prized family heirlooms without a shred of concern. They say that pawnbrokers have no compassion and would sooner die than lose money.

Yet I defy the stereotypes. I am happy. I can love. I have compassion. Specifically, I love security interests.

Security interests made my fortune. Do you know what a security interest is? According to the Uniform Commercial Code, it’s an “interest in personal property or fixtures which secures payment or performance of an obligation.” U.C.C. Article I § 1-201(37). That might sound like legal mumbo jumbo, but it’s actually quite simple. Basically, it means I give you a loan. In exchange, you give me an interest in your personal property. “Personal property” means anything you can move, so I can’t give you a loan on your house. Banks do that. You don’t need to own a house to get a loan from me. Rather, you can come on down to the Milwaukee, Rockford & La Crosse Loan Company and get a loan on stereo equipment, candlesticks, family portraits, video game consoles, hickory chests, jungle gym sets, record players, old chairs, used televisions, table cloths, bottles, watches, clocks and anything else in your house, except maybe the kitchen sink or the furnace. I give you the money and you promise to pay me back. You also promise to pay me interest every month. And if you don’t pay up, I take your pledge because I own it by law. That’s what a security interest means. You can look it up in the Uniform Commercial Code, Article 9.

I run a brisk business. People always need money in a pinch. And people always have something somewhat valuable lying around the house, so they bring it down to my shop. I look it over. I do some calculations. I ask him how much he wants on it. If he only wants $100 after pledging me a $14,000 silverware set, I know he probably stole it. But if he wants $4,000 for the same silverware set, I know he probably owns it; and I make it out whether he pays me back or not. After all, I get a security interest in the $14,000 set. If he doesn’t pay me back the $4,000 I loaned him—plus 15% interest per month over 12 months—I get to take the set and sell it for $14,000. So it’s a great deal for me. True, sometimes people get emotional when they pawn family heirlooms like silverware sets. But who cares about them? I’m just trying to run a loan company. And I’ll tell you, in tough economic times like these, I couldn’t be in a better business. I’m not just recession-proof; I’m recession-powered.

I hear the craziest stories these days. People come in saying they lost their jobs and they can’t pay a medical bill. They tell me they just got divorced and can’t make a child support payment. Other people say the car company is going to repossess their car unless they pay the note. So naturally all this puts me in an excellent bargaining position. I don’t have to risk much money if the borrower is desperate. What do I care if the borrower doesn’t pay his child support with the money I loan him? That’s between him and the woman, not me and him. If he doesn’t pay me back the $175 I lent him on time, I get to keep his $1,500 golf club. Yes, people scream at me and call me an avaricious old leech. But it doesn’t faze me. I know success when I see it. If I make a $1,325 profit on a golf club for a measly $175 loan, that’s a success, no matter who calls me a heartless miser.

One woman said I would burn in hell because I took away her dead mother’s diamond ring. I hear this kind of thing all the time. But a security interest is a security interest; shrieking women and hell have nothing to do with it. I loaned her $1,000 for a very nice antique ring worth about $9,400. She told me she lost her job at an insurance company two months before and she needed the cash to pay her rent. I gave her six months to get her ring back, at 12% interest per month—that was a discount rate, too. After six months, she had only paid me $456.21; she told me she still hadn’t found a job and had gotten on welfare. So I foreclosed on the ring. She started hollering and yelling about her dead mother right in the middle of the shop. She scared some customers away. I tried to console her. I said: “Well, you got $1,000 from me. You only paid me back $456.21. By law, I can’t report your default to a credit bureau, so actually I’m helping you out. Your credit is still good. Would you like to pawn something else?”

She didn’t listen. She started saying the devil would get me one day and that I was a predator. She stormed out of the shop sobbing and even threw a pamphlet up in the air.

That’s the last I saw of her. Two weeks later, I sold her mother’s ring for $9,000. That was a good day. By then I had completely forgotten about the outburst.

I don’t allow my emotions to interfere with my loan business. But that does not mean I am not happy. Just because I keep my emotions under control in the pawnshop does not mean I do not feel happy. To the contrary, I am very happy with my life. I made $976,812 last year after taxes. My inventory is worth $1,200,000 and I have a $2,000,000 credit line through First Wisconsin Bank, N.A. I never have to worry about loaning money because I have a strong customer base. That’s the great thing about security interests; if someone defaults, you just take their stuff and sell it. It’s a beautiful thing. You win even when you lose. I feel happy because I am in a good business position and I have plenty of money for myself.

Yet people keep telling me that I am not really happy. They say that I can’t be happy because I take advantage of people every day and “peddle negativity.” They say that pawnbrokers cannot be happy because they profit from misery, and happiness cannot coexist with misery.

This is nonsense. I know how I feel. I feel happy. What does it matter how I make my money? I have been very successful in my life. I provide a valuable economic service to people in the community. I help people survive tough times with fast cash. If it weren’t for me, people might not make their car payment, even if I wind up taking their bracelets or silver chains. I feel good about helping others, even if they can’t see it. I feel happy to live in a country that allows people to make informed economic decisions without government intrusion. Yes, I’ve done well. But isn’t that everyone’s end goal? Why should I not feel happy that I have made a lot of money pawnbroking?

Frankly, I don’t buy the argument that you can’t be happy if you deal in misery. Lots of other business profit from misery, or at least involve misery. Bankers deal in misery every day. So do lawyers, doctors, accountants and even psychotherapists. Yet no one says they can’t be happy. Why do people single out pawnbrokers for dealing out misery? Making money requires misery somewhere along the line; pawnbrokers are no different from anyone else. Someone needs to lose money in order for another person to make money. That’s going to make someone miserable. That’s called “economics.”

I don’t let others get me down. Ironically, most people who say I can’t be happy are unhappy themselves because they owe me money. How can they criticize me about something they don’t even know? They are just angry because they defaulted and I sold off their jewelry to some wholesaler.

To hell with my critics; I can speak for myself. Here’s what I know: I love security interests and I am happy about it. You don’t need to love other people in order to know happiness. Quite the contrary, I am living proof that you can love security interests and still be happy. Security interests are not people. They are property interests that guarantee that debtors will pay me back for a loan. Property interests don’t talk back, they don’t cheat and they don’t suffer depression or anxiety. They don’t cost money to feed and they don’t complain. They just sit there until you sell them. They increase in value sometimes, too. And they never lose their looks or get ornery. I simply can’t understand why people say that happiness can only flow from human relationships. In my experience, happiness flows much better from property relationships. Just look at my house; I did not buy it because I cultivated nurturing “human relationships.” Rather, I bought my house because I cultivated nurturing property relationships.

Property pays. People don’t. In that light, why bother with people?

Philosophers waste so much time debating about happiness. If they only knew how simple it could be. By loving security interests, I found happiness. Security interests opened the door to happiness for me. That is my precious secret. There is no need to love people. You simply must learn to love interests in property that secure payment or performance of obligations that run in your favor. When you love security interests, you don’t care what people say about you because they owe you money and you hold their lacquered dining room table as security. When you love security interests, the law lets you take stuff away from people without consequence. Security interests immunize you against anything people will ever say about you. Security interests save you from depending on people. In my book, that is a good recipe for happiness.

ARTISTS IN DEBT : THAT'S JUST THE WAY THEY ARE

AN ESSAY

Sometimes I genuinely identify with stories I read in the news, especially when they involve credit, hardship and creativity. You might think that those three issues do not arise in tandem very often. But they certainly have in my life, and apparently they have for photographer Annie Leibovitz, too. See For Annie Leibovitz, a Fuzzy Financial Picture, N.Y. Times, July 31, 2009. The article tells us that Annie is wrangling with a bank for control over her intellectual property catalogue, which she pledged as collateral for a $24 million loan last year. It looks like she will lose. After all, law favors the creditor; and Annie hasn’t paid her loan back. Pretty soon, a New York County sheriff will escort bankers into Annie’s home. Armed with clipboards, BlackBerries and appraisal books, they will seize her priceless works—all pursuant to contract, of course.

How did Annie sink so deeply into debt? How could such a “successful” artist be so dissolute? The article offers a striking answer: “The mind that can take these extraordinary pictures is not necessarily the same mind that is a perfect money manager.” Put simply, Annie Leibovitz doesn’t think about money. Her head is in the proverbial “artistic clouds.”

And there is nothing wrong with that. Annie may not get along well in this world, but she will live on long after she dies. In the end, people will remember her majestic portraits, not her petty disputes over loans and cash advances in fiscal year 2009. Put simply, “money managers” die and no one cares. Annie Leibovitz’s lender will die one day and be forgotten the next. But “flighty artists” with “money issues” die and leave behind a transcendent testament. It is true: Creative minds do not sit well with the banal concerns of money, credit and day-to-day management. The same gifts that make them unique make put them at a tremendous disadvantage when it comes to “everyday administration.”

Yet it may not be fair to simply assume that Annie’s money woes derived purely from her “artistic nature.” Although sources in the article say that she had always been “notoriously bad with her expenses,” that she “never turned things in on time” and “forgot to pay bills,” apparently she faced some genuine hardship, too. According to the article, Annie lost both her parents, her life partner and gained two children within five years. Perhaps she let her finances go because she really didn’t give a shit after losing the most important people in her life.

I can understand that. My father died three years ago and I will never be the same. His sudden death completely undermined my belief in “traditional life pursuits” because I saw that they all come to nothing in the end. Losing one parent is a cataclysmic psychological event, even if you don’t recognize it when it happens. Losing both multiplies the impact. And losing a life partner intensifies it even more.

I identified with Annie because I have suffered similar personal losses in a relatively short time. Within a year after my father died, my life partner suffered a catastrophic injury that landed him in the ICU for over a month. His heart stopped twice on the operating table and his doctors said he probably would not live. He recovered, but he has never been the same and will remain permanently disabled. I have been at his side ever since I received the dreaded 2 AM phone call alerting me that “your friend in the emergency room” two years ago. All this happened before I had fully processed my father’s death. It confused and deepened my grief. More importantly, the two events combined to make me deeply question every path I had chosen in life. They made me question assumptions I made about money, career and happiness. In a word, personal calamities—especially the death of parents and loved ones—force you to fundamentally reevaluate your life. Things that once seemed important suddenly seem ridiculous. After all, when your life’s foundations can suddenly evaporate in an instant, you can never really take anything for granted again. And you learn to doubt every plan, because nothing is certain.

I am a bad money manager, too. Even before I suffered my personal setbacks, I recoiled from money because it always struck me as “petty.” “Making money” requires careful, unexciting, mundane daily administration fraught with threatening financial consequences. Basically, it requires disciplined attention to profoundly boring subject matter, like scheduling and checklists. I certainly do not claim to be an artist on Annie Leibovitz’s level, but I understood what the article meant when it referred to her mind’s natural hostility to “management.” My mind does not naturally germinate toward daily administration, either. I have trouble making phone calls. I hate making appointments. I forget things on the “to-do” list. I detest doing laundry and running errands. Yet I do these things because I must: Left to my own devices, I would probably ruin myself. Why? Because my mind naturally germinates to “more substantial” things, like philosophy or the next satire I want to write. My mind dwells on the absurdity and foolishness of existence. Money and “administration,” however, typify that very absurdity and foolishness. That is why I can’t stand either one. I intellectually abhor them. I push them out of my consciousness as much as I can, even if it makes me “irresponsible.”

I suspect that Annie Leibovitz does the same thing. She doesn’t think about debt; she thinks about the next grandiose photo shoot she wants to do. She is thinking about the exquisite details and social commentary she wants to express through the image. She is thinking about aesthetics, color, lighting, shading and beauty. She is not thinking about outstanding bills, credit scores or whether a loan is 45 days past due. These are “insignificant matters” to an artist’s mind. Of course, this is not a healthy prescription for survival in a commercial world that exults daily administration over creativity. It may lead to artistic achievements that transcend the centuries, but it renders the artist an outcast during his own lifetime.

Mozart was no different. He generated monumental artistic works during his life. But he was a “notoriously bad money manager” who constantly racked up debts and died penniless. His mind was elsewhere. He didn’t think about commerce and administration. He thought about the beautiful melodies in his head. He worked to express his creative impulse, not to satisfy petty creditors and bankers. His commitment to creativity ruined him in life, but it made him immortal after his death. Of course, fame after death pays no bills. Yet artists, like Mozart and Annie, really could care less whether they pay their bills. After all, that is mere administration—who has time for that? In short, artistic genius rarely translates into earthly success because the free-ranging mental state necessary for artistic genius typically rules out the mundane mental state necessary for financial “responsibility.” Artistic geniuses simply do not attach importance to matters they consider trivial or petty, even if they suffer for it.

Many great artists die worthless. Then their creditors move in, seize their works and exploit them for all the money they never earned during life. I always find it ironic when banks play Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 when I’m on hold for an agent ready to take my payment. That’s a debtor’s song they’re playing!

It is hard to live a “responsible” life. It is hard to hold your emotions together long enough to survive childhood, go to college, get an education and please private employers. If any substantial misfortune strikes during the journey upward, success becomes progressively more difficult. If anything derails your focus, you will not achieve great commercial goals. If you are creative, you stand a greater chance to be distracted from the “traditional life program.” Success in the “traditional life program” requires unswerving discipline and rigorous attention to administrative matters. Yet those matters are revolting to creative people. They attend to them with grudging resentment, if at all. And if they don’t attend to them, they come to ruin. In a word, creativity is a “handicap” in the quest for “responsibility.” Some, like Annie Leibovitz, achieve success on their own terms. They get patrons and stipends without selling themselves into the “traditional life program.” Creativity may impose a disadvantage on most people struggling to “live responsibly.” But a few break through despite their creative handicap. Nonetheless, they remain uneasy with the demands of “responsible life.” It is only a matter of time before commerce smacks them down. After all, they are not “responsible” enough to fend off creditors and avoid debt. They blunder into financial straits because they do not even really think about what they are doing. This is what happened to Annie.

Combined with personal hardship, artistic creativity makes commercial success virtually impossible. Genuine artistic creativity interposes a natural aversion to the administrative tact necessary for commercial success, while personal hardship undermines the very motivation to seek commercial success in the first place. Taken together, personal hardship and creativity combine to form a recipe for commercial failure. I know this because my own creative impulses predominate over my commercial impulses, and my own personal hardships showed me that seeking “success in the traditional life program” is really a quest for meaningless shadows. For me, “responsibility” and “management” are a chore, not an opportunity. And my personal hardships make me see that success really yields nothing in the end anyway. Recognizing that, I am happy simply to live and to give voice to the ideas in my mind. That may not make me rich, but it gives me a feeling of more lasting significance in a world that actively rewards insignificant lives.

In sum, I was not surprised to read that Annie Leibovitz is in debt. Artists usually are. They simply do not attach importance to “everyday administration” the way “responsible people are supposed to.” Artists just don’t “fit” in the “normal commercial value system.” Their minds dwell on larger issues, not just property. And when I read that Annie suffered profound personal losses, I understood even more. When creative, thoughtful people suffer hardship, money management is the last thing on their minds.

But perhaps that is a compliment. In commerce, it is a cruel truth that uncreative, forgettable people always prevail over creative, memorable ones. Forgettable people know how to handle money and die unknown. Memorable ones are scatterbrained, irresponsible and live forever. No one will remember the banker who seized Annie Leibovitz’s photographs and “owned” them. Yet everyone will remember Annie Leibovitz, the great photographer.

TRAGIC NEWS FROM IRAQ

NEWS FLASH

BAGHDAD--Reason, Commerce, Justice & Free Beer regrets to report that an American soldier has died in Iraq. At 5:30 AM EST, the Pentagon confirmed that Private First Class John C. Earl of the Army’s First Division (The Big Red One) succumbed in a hospital after suffering injuries in a vicious firefight with Sunni insurgents near Baghdad. Pfc. Earl was 23 years old. We express our deepest sympathies to Pfc. Earl’s family and loved ones. When American heroes fall, we all feel pain.

Pfc. Earl was a model soldier and citizen. He hailed from Mansfield, Ohio, where he worked at a local car insurance company as an assistant claims representative prior to joining the Army in February 2008. Earl explained to his parents that he joined the army “because al-Qaeda [was] a real threat to all Ohioans.” According to friends, Earl also said that “Osama bin Laden knew Saddam Hussein” and that “Saddam [had] to be stopped,” even though Saddam had been hanged in January 2007. Risking all for his beliefs and his country, Earl left behind a promising insurance career and young wife to protect Ohio from international terror in Iraq.

Pfc. Earl conducted himself with great dignity and responsibility during civilian life. As a teenager, he financed his own high school education by taking out private loans (at 9% APR) from a local Ohio bank. He took out loans from another bank (at 7.6% APR) in order to purchase a 2005 Chevrolet automobile. Despite his early age, Earl worked hard to fulfill his financial obligations to his creditors. He studied full-time and held down three jobs at the same time, including a job at the local ice cream parlor. He never failed to make timely payments on his loans. Upon graduation from high school in 2004, Earl married his sweetheart, Joanna C. Edwards. Earl took out another loan (at 6.9% APR) to purchase a home for his new family. He never missed a mortgage payment, even when he needed to work seven days a week to satisfy his debt responsibilities.

Earl was just as responsible a husband as he was a debtor. He never cheated on his wife. In fact, he accompanied her to the Third Mansfield Methodist Church every Sunday at 10 AM. For Earl, fidelity was a virtue. He honored both the wife to whom he owed faithfulness and the banks to whom he owed money. Most importantly, Earl never even entertained bad thoughts. He took the Bible’s teachings to heart. According to acquaintances, Earl always said: “A sin in the mind is just as bad as a sin in deed.” Despite pressures, temptations and difficulties, Earl never shirked his responsibilities. He understood his place in society. And he worked hard to fulfill his obligations every single day.

Earl believed that military service was the best way to give back for his rewarding life in America. Earl was proud of his job at the Mansfield Property & Casualty Insurance Company, where he earned $23,300 per year with limited co-pay medical insurance (with in-network providers and subject to the company’s right of refusal). He was proud of his wife, mortgage, car and church. Earl was happy in his civilian life. But he understood that al-Qaeda could take it all away unless he stood up to protect it. He volunteered for active duty in Iraq, determined to stop the terrorists bent on taking away his job, church, wife and obligations. Over his wife’s desperate pleas to stay home to raise their child, Earl went off to war.

Not surprisingly, Earl lived military life with the same spirit of duty and responsibility that blessed him in civilian life. He manned a 50-caliber machine gun atop an armored vehicle assigned to protect a fortified compound in Iraq that housed important American energy industry contractors. Within weeks, Earl had his first taste of battle. In a violent engagement known as Operation Purple Anaconda, Earl’s unit preemptively attacked an insurgent base in Baghdad, inflicting 5,612 enemy casualties without losing a single American soldier. Earl personally killed 672 insurgents, none of whom went to church, paid rent, filed income tax returns, owned automobiles, owed interest on back loans or held down responsible jobs. In fact, each insurgent Earl killed had sworn a vow to murder American children, disrupt American commerce, refuse to pay bills and kill American pets. Worse, every insurgent Earl killed had cheated on his wife, inhabited several addresses over the past six years and failed to return phone calls from prospective employers. In Earl’s words: “They weren’t just terrorists. They were irresponsible, too.” In that first battle, Earl served his country well.

Following his baptism by fire, Earl quickly became a veteran. In battle after battle, he showed outstanding valor by gunning down both actual and suspected terrorists, including veiled men masquerading as women. In each case, he showed great responsibility. Although he grieved when comrades died, he took solace in the knowledge that roughly 4,012 Iraqis died for every American who fell. And he took added consolation in the fact that every single Iraqi he killed was an irresponsible terrorist who threatened American jobs and investment ventures. If he could not save his buddies, at least he could kill thousands more insurgents to protect America.

Earl saw his final battle on July 10. While protecting a convoy of American natural gas excavators on a foray to locate fossil fuel deposits south of Baghdad, an enormous insurgent force—including terrorist raiders on camelback—swooped in from the desert hills. Earl laid down a curtain of fire with his 50-caliber machine gun, mowing down 982 insurgents and camels. His comrades called for air support. A-10 ground attack planes raked the terrorists with 30-millimeter cannon fire and deluged them with napalm. A-64 Apache attack helicopters hammered them with missiles. Over ten thousand extremists perished under the withering American fire, but they just kept coming. Like obsessed banshees from Muslim Hell, they charged Earl’s brave defenders, shouting: “Allah, ackbar!”

At some point, Earl ran out of ammunition. According to eyewitnesses, a cowardly insurgent fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the side of Earl’s armored vehicle, catapulting him from his position. He suffered injuries in the fall but kept fighting. He drew his sidearm and shot four camels, then killed their riders with his standard-issue knife. But there were too many insurgents. Taking meticulous aim, Earl fired his last shot into an insurgent’s head. Like all the others, Earl’s final victim—an Iraqi terrorist insurgent bomber named Ibrahim al-Khalifi, age 19—was a perennial marital cheater, credit dodger and deadbeat tenant who never paid rent or went to church. With his last bullet gone, Earl valiantly tried to fight his oppressors with his bare hands. Although he strangled six irresponsible terrorists, a cowardly insurgent blew himself up with a grenade less than 5 feet from Earl, sending lethal shrapnel into his chest. He collapsed to the ground. Minutes later, M1A1 tanks from the 1st Armored Division arrived, killed the remaining 75,000 insurgents and saved the natural gas excavators from certain death. Medics carried Earl from the field and transported him to a military hospital in Baghdad.

Earl put up a brave fight for survival. He endured for ten days before finally slipping into a coma. Immediately before his death, Earl told his commanding officer: “At least I took a few thousand of those deadbeat terrorist bastards with me. They might have taken my life, but they’ll never lay a hand on my wife or steal my job. And I made all my payments, too. I never missed one. I don’t regret anything. I made all the right decisions. I never cheated. I never asked anyone for help. Please make sure someone sends in the checks for July to GMAC and the bank. They’re in my knapsack. I even put stamps on the envelopes. I am proud to have given my life for a country where I could take out loans for my necessities.” In short, in his last moments on earth, Earl was thinking responsibly.

Back in Mansfield, George G. Custice, Earl’s former employer, reacted to news of his employee’s death with great emotion. Starting next week, however, he plans to honor Earl as an American hero by offering special “Hero’s Insurance Rates” for Mansfield residents. Those rates offer a 15% discount on collision policies purchased before August 31, 2009 (subject to special limitations; see store for details). “It’s the least we can do to salute a great American,” Custice said.

Earl’s wife said: “I’m sad. But I’m glad my husband protected Ohio against Saddam Hussein.”

DELINQUENCY : A POWERFUL WORD

AN ESSAY

Power interests me because it pervades our lives. In many cases, we do not even perceive oppressive power relationships because they are everywhere. We accustom ourselves to them. We subject ourselves to them, even unconsciously. Most conspicuously, we live under certain public powers. There is overt public power, as when government cracks down on protests or visibly executes a condemned man. There is also subtle public power, as when tax collectors privately pursue individuals who do not have money to pay their tax bill. Government holds its power over us by threatening legal compulsion: Either we obey rules or it inflicts pain on our bodies and property. This is how public power operates.

But all exercises in public power pale in comparison to the ingenious methods designed to serve private power. As pervasive as government power may be, it still knows boundaries. Despite some glaring exceptions throughout our history, government must always act according to some legal authority that derives from a written, public source. Furthermore, government agents must abide by certain constitutional restrictions when impacting citizens’ bodies, liberty and property. These constitutional restrictions incidentally enforce “governmental decency” on State actors. In short, there are certain things that government simply cannot do. Not so with private actors.

Private power is far more pervasive than public power. The law cannot be everywhere all the time. In fact, the Constitution expressly and impliedly keeps government out of certain spaces and decisions. See, e.g., U.S. Const., Amendments III (no soldiers in private homes), IV (no unreasonable searches or seizures), V (no compelled self-incrimination or land seizures without just compensation), IX (unenumerated rights), XIV ("Due Process liberty," including freedom from "arbitrary government action"). The Constitution also prohibits government from directly regulating men’s minds, thoughts, opinions, beliefs or conscience. See, e.g., U.S. Const. Amendment I. But private power knows no such restrictions. It can freely enter men’s homes, appeal to their conscience and affect their decisions, no matter how intimate. While private power does not always carry legal force, it can deploy the law when it must. It is no exaggeration to say that the law serves private power, not the other way around.

What is private power? Power itself is a nebulous concept. Generally, it refers to one man’s or group’s authority over another man or another group. This, in turn, does not necessarily mean legal authority. It is much broader than that. Power includes the power to impinge on a person’s conscience, to make him feel guilty, to make him change his behavior or to make him feel obligated in any sense. In essence, power subjects: It impresses the object with a sense of “smallness” compared to the person who applies the power. It enforces obedience, as the employer cows the employee. Power is multifaceted. It appears in every context. But there is one prominent commonality in all this variety: Power always involves inequality. Without inequality in advantage, wealth, money or even sexual appeal, power could not break its objects into submission. When it comes to power, there are strong parties and weak parties. The weak party needs something the strong party has. As such, he must modify his behavior to adhere to the strong party’s requirements.

Yet power operates in far subtler ways than naked oppression. After all, if power is too oppressive, its subjects revolt, just as a dog will abandon its master if he is too heavy-handed. Power does not just dominate in a petty or brutish way; it also pervades lives. Consider the employee who awakes every morning knowing that he must appear at his job. Power pervades his life; he needs the paycheck to feed himself and his family. He does not question how he gets it; he surrenders to power and follows its commands. It is unconscious. He does not revolt against it; it is not petty. Power might inspire resentment, but not enough to make him question its basic authority. Resentment or not, power pervades his life and channels his decisions. Or consider the debtor who struggles to pay back his creditor. He lives his economic life knowing that he must fork over a good amount of his earnings to a stronger party who can hurt him if he does not. Power overshadows the debtor’s life as it did the employee’s. It constrains his thoughts and actions. It makes decisions for him. It impacts his freedom. It weakens his will. It subjects him to a “more powerful” decisionmaker. Why? Because he needed something he did not have before. To get it, he surrenders to private power. He pays as much with his soul as he does with his money.

Debt interests me for the same reason that power does. After all, debt relationships express power. Debt is incident to power. If power expresses a relationship between strong and weak parties that includes subtle mental controls, debt is a perfect example. Creditors are strong; they have something the debtor needs. Debtors, by contrast, are weak. They surrender both their souls and their money to get what the creditor has. Even if the debtor takes something worth comparatively little, the creditor relishes his power over the debtor by demanding far more in return. For example, creditors might loan $25,000 to a debtor. In return, the debtor must pay back $37,500 in two years. If he does not, the creditors have a legal right to seize anything the debtor owns to make good the debt. If the debtor succeeds in paying back the creditor, he gets nothing; he merely eludes the pain the creditor might have inflicted had he defaulted. And he actually enriches the creditor in the process. For creditors, it is a win-win situation: If they do not make a profit on the debtor, they can take what they want from him. If they do make a profit, well, who can argue with success? Yet the debtor lives under pressure. He either must enrich the creditor or lose everything. In this sense, we see classic inequality at work: Debtors and creditors face unequal burdens and owe unequal obligations to each other. And only the debtor lives in fear of legal compulsion. The creditor is the one with the real power—the power to force another to give him something or suffer for failing to deliver.

How does power describe its subjects? Language expresses power in an extremely subtle way, for only the powerful have the authority to choose prevailing words. They have the authority to label their subjects with concepts and epithets. They have the authority to channel both meaning and morality against those who defy them. On this point, consider the word creditors use to describe debtors who neglect their obligations: Delinquents. Creditors use the word in a very matter-of-fact way. They send a letter: “The balance due on this account is now delinquent.” The debtor feels morally bad about this result. He feels scolded. And he knows that the creditor now has power to do even more harm. Power functions best when it constrains its subjects’ minds with guilt, shame and obligation. Power uses the word “delinquent” to evoke these negative moral feelings in the “bad” debtor.

But why exactly “delinquent?” What does “delinquency” have to do with repaying money used for some forgotten commercial purchase? After all, etymologically speaking, “delinquency” delivers a strong moral rebuke. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th Ed.), “delinquency” stems from the Latin word “delinquentia,” meaning “to leave undone or to commit a fault.” True, the concept involves “leaving something off” or “omitting to do something.” But it also includes a strong moral element. It does not just mean neglect; it means neglect that makes the person morally blameworthy. The definitions bear out this interpretation. “Delinquency,” according to Webster, means not just “1. failure or neglect to do what the law or duty requires,” but also “3. a fault or misdeed.” More to the point, “delinquency” broadly refers to “thorough badness” or even “outlawry,” as we hear in terms such as “perpetual delinquent” or “juvenile delinquent.” Referring to this definition, Webster says that “delinquency” can also mean “behavior…that is antisocial or in violation of the law.” Id. at Definition 4.

In this grammatical light, we see that a “delinquent” is unsalvageable. When we label someone a “delinquent,” we condemn in strong moral terms. A “delinquent” is not just someone who forgets to pay something once in a while. He is a brigand, an outlaw, an irretrievable criminal. He is not just a person who forgets to send in a check for $45.12 every month; he is by nature “antisocial,” commits “faults or misdeeds” and invariably acts “in violation of the law.”

Power consciously controls language in these circumstances. It consciously chooses the word “delinquency” to apply to debt because it wants debtors to feel bad about neglecting their obligations to their superiors. But does failing to pay a bill really render the debtor an “outlaw?” Isn’t this going a bit too far? We all neglect things from time to time. Life submerges us with picayune tasks every day. It is understandable that we might pass one over now and then. From power’s perspective, it is all right to pass over some tasks, but not tasks in which power has an interest, such as a loan payment. You are not an outlaw if you forget to pick up your daughter at school one day, but you are an outlaw if you miss your car payment. Power wants debtors to feel bad about neglecting particular obligations, not all obligations. Specifically, power appeals to the debtor’s conscience when it stands to gain from the debtor. Thus, power cares only for itself; it uses morality and language to enforce obligations that provide benefit. In the abstract, it does not care about “obligation.” It cares only about obligations from which it can derive personal enrichment.

I do not like this at all. We all have a right to use language to express ourselves. No one has authority to selectively alter a word’s meaning to assert his own material dominance over another person. Yet this is precisely what private power does with the word “delinquency;” and no one really seems to notice. Private power has hijacked this word in order to crush its subjects into moral dejection. Why? Because it knows that morally guilty and shameful people are more likely to be obedient and to hand over what it wants. Although morality has very little to do with private commercial dealing, private power injects morality into commercial dealing because it provides additional assurance that it will make a profit. In a strange way, too, it uses morality to remind its subjects who is boss. After all, bosses don’t feel guilt or shame; they are the ones who inflict those feelings on their underlings. Guilt and shame—along with all moral feelings—flow downward. People feel guilty and shameful when they fail to adhere to a standard imposed from above. There is nothing "above" power; power is “the above.” Only those under power can feel guilt and shame. And they are effective weapons to compel allegiance.

Private power is “above” us everywhere. When we actually feel morally bad when we receive “delinquency” letters, we know we’re subjects. Unlike public power, private power does not just impact our bodies and property. It also impacts our deepest moral feelings. That is real, abiding power. That is the kind of power against which revolt is impossible. By comparison, public power and the law are clumsy, imperfect weapons. Private power, on the other hand, is so pervasive and so subtle that is virtually invisible. It influences minds and emotions, not just pocketbooks. And private power prefers it that way: Private. Why attract attention when you don’t need to?

DON'T BUY OUR PRODUCT - IT IS THE WORST ONE ON THE MARKET

A PAID ADVERTISEMENT

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PEOPLE WHO LOVE TO GO SHOPPING PARTY

POLITICAL PARTIES FOR A CHANGING WORLD

By : Mr. H. Langdell Kauffing, Party Vice President and Former Chairman, American Retailers for Maximum Credit Renewal Notwithstanding Minimal Income, Inc., a For-Profit Lobbying Group, Washington, D.C.

America knows how to bounce back. When tough economic times knock us down, we get back up like a scrappy underdog. The Depression knocked us down in the 1930s. We got up with a vengeance in the 1940s. Since then, Americans have navigated several major recessions. Through them all, they stayed strong. Even when life looks hopeless, Americans stay on top.

Today, we face yet another financial crisis. This time, they say it’s for real. The talking heads all squawk about “imminent collapse,” “unemployment,” “bread lines,” “bankruptcy” and “looming economic disaster.” They say Americans are paying the price for free money and bad decisions. They say Americans can’t even buy homes or get loans anymore. They say that unless the government steps in to rescue American businesses and insurance companies, the whole country will descend into anarchy.

Why did this happen? The talking heads say that Americans “spent irresponsibly,” “borrowed irresponsibly” and “lived irresponsibly.” In a word, they blame credit cards, banks and undisciplined consumers for casting the economy into peril. America, they say, brought this misery upon itself. They say Americans should have saved instead of shopped. They call on government to help save America from spendthrifts. Now, they say Americans must hoard their cash and stay away from shopping centers.

We cannot do this. Americans love to shop, and we stand for them. We are the People Who Love to Go Shopping Party. We speak for millions of Americans from coast to coast. We believe that we can beat the financial crisis in the same way Americans have beaten every recession that has come down the pike since 1932: By shopping, spending and consuming. Our economy gets nowhere when people bury their cash and hide jewels under the mattress. Rather, our economy will only recover when people dare again to spend. Spending is patriotic, not saving. We have a short answer to the talking heads: Sure, we’ll stop shopping—in hell.

We agree that our economy needs a boost. The housing collapse should not have happened. Shoppers need homes. Shoppers could not shop if they did not first have comfortable homes in which to place all the merchandise they buy. Shoppers also need a place to sleep in between shopping sessions. To that end, we agree that the government must bail out shoppers so they can pay their mortgages. After all, a homeless shopper is no shopper at all. We also promise to lobby for additional bailout money for more shopping. What good is bailout money if shoppers are afraid to spend it? We need to send a clear message to Americans in these dark times: “Life is back to normal. Start spending like it.” We want people to go out and buy new cars, tires, stereo systems and power lawnmowers. We want them to buy gifts for Mom and new furniture for sonny before he goes off to college. In short, we believe the naysayers border on treason when they suggest that Americans should sit on their money. No. Patriots spend. Traitors save.

There is only one way out of this hole. We need to spend our way out. And the clock is ticking.

Spending is not easy when you have no money. It is impossible to purchase a $7,500 kiddy Go-Kart® when you only have $1,323 in your bank account. Yet without immediate consumer spending, our country will slide further into the financial abyss. To that extent, we promise to reinvigorate consumer credit opportunities. For the last few years, evil legislators have launched a concerted propaganda campaign “warning Americans” about “credit dangers.” They say that credit companies prey on weak consumers and tyrannize hard-working Americans with interest charges. They say that runaway credit leads to poverty, homelessness and bankruptcy.

We must stop these lies. Consumer credit is the only way most Americans can buy things they can’t afford. When Americans buy things they can’t afford, the economy improves. Bearing that in mind, we must encourage Americans to spend money they don’t have. To do that, credit must be available to all, not just those with jobs, income and real estate. In America, all men are created equal. We believe it is only patriotic to demand that all Americans have equal opportunities to obtain credit. We see no reason why a rich man should be able to buy a power scooter on credit, but a welder cannot. Our economy suffers when only rich men buy power scooters. If we want to escape recession, both welders and doctors must buy power scooters—no matter how much each man has in the bank.

We have faith in American consumers. We do not treat them like children. We do not scold them for shopping. We trust them to do what’s best. Put simply, we believe that American consumers like to shop. History shows that when Americans shop, the country prospers. Additionally, Americans are happy when they shop. We do not believe the fearmongers who claim that runaway shopping caused the financial crisis. We refuse to allow the fearmongers to stop Americans from doing what they love. We refuse to allow them to blockade our shopping strips, malls and boutiques. We demand access to shopping centers. We want to shop. We can take care of ourselves. As the People Who Love to Go Shopping Party, we are united in our belief that shopping is a right. And it is a good, public right, because when we shop, the economy improves.

Can anyone really claim that saving money will rescue our economy? What good will saving do for Motel 6®? What good will saving do for Toys-R-Us®? What good will saving do for General Motors? Our economy will continue to wither if important companies sell nothing. They will not sell anything if officious government policies frighten people from spending money. Saving keeps money out of the economy; spending pours it in. A river cannot run without water. Spending provides healthy flow to the economic river. By contrast, saving causes economic drought. Without new money flow, the river dries up and parches. Is this what the government suggests? Saving and so-called “responsibility” will lead to further drought. And when the economic river dries up, everybody loses. We all drink from the river. If it runs dry, we will all die on the dusty riverbank.

We must pour our money into the river, not hoard money away from it. When we shop, we pour money into the companies that make the river flow. When the river flows, the company passes money along to employees. When the river flows, Americans get jobs. When Americans have jobs, they have more money to add to the river. And when the river flows, the company can pay taxes and make charitable donations. But none of these things will happen if Americans do not shop. Shopping is like the spring rain that cleanses the earth and strengthens the stream. Shopping is the lifeblood in economic life, just as the river provides lifeblood to all the plants and animals around it. In America, our economy is our habitat. We can only maintain our habitat if we give it water. Thus, it is only natural to spend. We must protect our economic river. We can only do that by shopping.

We promise to defend American shoppers against all encroachments. Put a party in power that will protect your right to go shopping. Do not let naysayers stamp out your rights with admonitions to “save your pennies.” We did not overcome the Depression by scrimping and hoarding. We overcame the Depression by pouring our money back into the economic river, even if we had to take out loans to do it. We can defeat this crisis by shopping, just as our great-grandparents did. Unlike the fearmongers, we have faith in our shoppers. We believe that government should encourage shopping, not frustrate it. To that end, we promise to make both money and credit available to all Americans.

Shopping is not a crime. In fact, it is the best thing an American can do to save the country from economic disaster. At the same time, shopping makes the individual consumer feel good. It is not a one-way street. The retailer gets the consumer’s money, but the consumer gets a video game cartridge, a refrigerator or a desk. These things make consumers happy. In this sense, shopping is both an individually joyful and patriotic activity. Shoppers sacrifice their money. But they get a welcome reward for it. Most patriotic sacrifices are not so pleasant. Shopping is unique in the sense that it saves the country at the same time it pleases the consumer. In that regard, it is hard to understand how anyone could think that shopping is bad, let alone irresponsible.

We believe that it is more responsible to be patriotic than parsimonious. Only shopping will save this country. Saving the country is patriotic, not saving money. Saving money will not save the country. It will cause the money river to run dry. If that happens, the United States will fall further into economic turmoil. How is that patriotic or responsible? The fearmongers say that “saving money” is “responsible.” Yet saving money will lead to national collapse. Again, we ask: How is it “responsible” to drive America to destruction? Put bluntly, the fearmongers are wrong. Saving money is not responsible because it is not patriotic. Patriotism means protecting and rescuing the United States from economic disaster. Only shopping can do that. In that sense, shopping is patriotic—and patriotism is responsible. We therefore assure all Americans: It is not “irresponsible” to shop, nor should you castigate yourselves for spending your savings at a car dealership. When you spend money, you are protecting this country. You are not betraying it.

We are confident that Americans will see that saving is not the answer to the financial crisis. Rather, we are confident that Americans will come to their senses and start shopping again. We, the People Who Love to Go Shopping Party, are dedicated to ending the lies about spending money. We promise to doggedly protect Americans’ right to shop, and that means confronting all the gloomy rhetoric about “saving,” “responsibility” and “ prudence.” In our view, Americans have a responsibility to be patriotic. To be patriotic, Americans must fight to rescue the United States from economic turmoil. That is true responsibility. And that means spending money—today.

Americans will overcome this menace by buying expensive merchandise every day without fear. Saving money got us into this predicament in the first place. It is time to fight back and buy what we want. It is time to end the fear. Let us join hands and tell the world: “We are not afraid to go shopping, even if we have no money in the bank, no job and no income.” We are the People Who Love to Go Shopping Party. We will fight for your right to shop--always and every day.

Be patriotic. Get out there and buy something.

WHY IT IS GOOD TO HAVE MONEY

AN EDITORIAL

By : Mr. Arnold F. Silver, Esq., Partner, Gold, Diamond, Silver & Greener, P.C., Attorneys Specializing in Commercial Paper, Finance, Banking & International Currency Transactions.

I was asked to write an essay about our law practice. I decided, however, that it would be much more appropriate merely to explain why it is good to have money. Legal questions and money questions generally go hand in hand. For that reason, writing about money is the same as writing about legal practice. Suffice it to say, when we practice law at our firm, we talk about money—whether directly, indirectly, figuratively, literally, symbolically, by implication or by insinuation—all the time. And it is certainly our goal. Put simply, we do not get up in the morning thinking about helping clients with our unique legal knowledge. We get up in the morning thinking about how much money the firm will make each day. Having clarified why I am writing, I will now discuss why it is good to have money.

I have money. You don’t. I like the way I feel. You don’t. I can buy a car and a house without anxiety. I can make all my payments every month, plus have money left over in all my accounts. I can drive to work and drive home, then comfortably watch television before going to bed on a very soft mattress. You worry all the time whether you will have enough cash at month’s end to stay in your apartment. I send my laundry to be cleaned and pressed every week. I can afford it. You can’t. You live in rumpled clothes because you don’t have the money or time to wash them regularly. I can go on long vacations with my wife because I have a lot of extra money. I can sit on the beach for several weeks knowing that my house and car will be there when I get home. You can’t go on vacation. You can barely buy groceries. You can’t go anywhere. You have to think about getting money to eat. In essence, it is better to be me than you. It is good to have money.

I run a business and I get all the proceeds. You work for someone and get a few dollars in return. I feel perfectly normal each day giving instructions to my employees. You feel awful each day taking peremptory commands from your bosses. At the end of each quarter, my partners and I divide up the surplus revenue, giving me a large cash bonus. You get an insulting paycheck. I make a lot more money than you because I own more than you do. You make a lot less money than I do because you own nothing. You don’t have the money to own anything, either. I will keep my money and stay the way I am. You will keep making a few dollars and stay the way you are. I am doing better than you because I have money. You are doing worse than I am because you don’t have money. This again proves that it is good to have money.

I have investments because I have extra money to spend on them. You can’t make investments because you have no extra money. I make a lot of extra money from my real estate investments, money markets and stocks. You do not have any real estate investments, money markets or stocks because you can’t afford them. I feel good knowing that I have profitable investments. You feel panicked and terrified that you have almost nothing in the bank. I have a portfolio that generates income each month without any effort on my part. You do not have a portfolio and you generate no income if you don’t work. I own property and I can do what I want with it when I want to. You own no property and you have to listen to your landlord. You wish you had what I have. But you don’t. Money gave me what I have, so it is good to have money.

I can help people like you because I have money. You want to change your life. You want to make money. But before you can, you need a loan. I can give you a loan because I have money. You need money to pay for your necessities and go to school. You need me so you can finally make more money. I don’t need the money; you do. I am doing fine. You aren’t; that’s why you need a loan. If I give you a loan, you will have my money. But I want my money back—plus more. You might have my money for a while, but in the end, I will have my money back, plus a lot of yours. You need my money. But in the end I will have yours. I don’t really need your money. Yet no one gets my money without giving me theirs. That wouldn’t be fair. No one gives away money for free. And you need a loan, don’t you? I don’t have to worry. You do. I have money. You don’t. You wouldn’t be asking for a loan if you did. In a word, it is good to have money. You don’t have to ask for loans when you already have money.

I do not have many problems because I have money. You have a lot more problems than I do because you have no money. Life is better when there are fewer problems. Life is worse when there are more problems. Money eliminates many problems. That is why I have fewer problems than you. It is better to have only a few problems than many problems. We both might have problems with relationships. But I do not worry about rent, food, gas bills, air conditioning costs, loan debt, my job, medical care, my credit score or my bank balance. You worry about all these things and relationships. I only worry about relationships. So you have lot more problems than I do. That means I have a better life because I have money. You have a worse life because you don’t.

I can make my money work for me. I can charge interest. I can open trust accounts. I can diversify my funds. You don’t even have funds, so you can’t diversify them. You can’t open trust accounts or charge interest, either, because you don’t have any money. Money can’t work for you if you don’t have any. It feels good to know that your money is working for you, because then you don’t have to work as hard. But you feel terrible now because you have to do all the work. After all, your money isn’t working for you because you do not have any money. You wish you were me because I have money. You can’t be me until you have money. And you don’t. My money works for me and I feel good about it. You have no money at all and you feel bad about it. For that reason, it is good to have money. In any event, it is better to have money than not to have money.

In my opinion, my life is better than yours. Typically, I do not make moral judgments. Rather, I make financial judgments based solely on figures and potential profitability. In some cases, however, I can make moral judgments based upon financial considerations. In this case, I can say that I am happier than you. I am happier because I am less anxious, nervous, angry, scared, upset, stressed, depressed, resentful and desperate than you. Furthermore, I experience more bodily comfort, pleasure, delight and enjoyment than you because I do not worry as much about money matters. You occasionally experience bodily comfort, pleasure, delight and enjoyment. But more often you are nervous, angry, scared, upset, stressed, depressed, resentful and desperate because you do not have enough money to pay your bills. You live in uncertainty. Uncertainty makes it impossible to relax and feel good. By contrast, I feel certain every day that I have more than enough money to pay any bill that comes my way, even a bill for unexpected dental work. That certainty eliminates any negative emotions I might feel. I do not feel resentful; why should I? I do not take instructions; I give them. I do not have to be somewhere everyday at 7 AM; my employees do. I do not wait until someone tells me I can leave my desk; I tell my employees when they can leave. I make my own hours, I go where I wish and I don’t suffer for it. Why? Because I have money. Money makes me free and happy. You don’t have money. You are not free and you are unhappy. You would rather be free and happy. But you can’t be either free or happy until you have money. I have money. As a financial and moral matter, that gives me a better life than you.

In conclusion, it is good to have money because it brings freedom, happiness, certainty, power and self-determination. By contrast, it is bad not to have money because it leads to bondage, powerlessness, debt, unhappiness, uncertainty, indignity, shame, contempt, resentment and anxiety. I have money. You don’t. I am happy and free. You aren’t.

I am glad I live in a country that lets me have money. You live in the same country, so what are you whining about? Stop sulking. Go make some money. Make yourself happy and free.

Remember: You can always get a loan from me.

DEBT, LATE PAYMENTS, INTEREST AND LEGAL WEAPONRY : THERE IS NO MERCY IN COMMERCE

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

Nobody likes to default. It is a dirty word. It means that you failed to uphold your promises. But few people worry about staining their honor when they default. Rather, they worry about the massively stressful legal process that will soon befall them. Soon, they will receive harassing telephone calls, summonses, judgments, late payment assessments, lien notices and garnishment orders. They will experience firsthand the whole legal arsenal with which the law arms creditors. Worse, their creditors will call them “irresponsible people who do not consider the rights of others,” adding a wholly unnecessary moral dimension to purely legal questions. All for what? Because they ran out of money. Life threw them a curve; they couldn’t afford the payments anymore.

Contract law fascinates me because it allows private parties to create private law. Contrary to popular belief, private contracts do not directly implicate the State; the State only steps in to enforce them when deals go awry. In large part, however, contracts represent quintessentially private ordering. They allow private individuals to make their own, compulsory rules in order to obtain some material benefit from others. In theory, parties to a contract are equal. One party possesses something the other wants; each side gains exactly as much as the other loses, and vice versa. Yet this “equality” in bargaining power only exists in law textbooks. In modern commerce, most transactions involve gross disparities in power. One party (usually a corporation) has something others desperately need, leaving them to accept difficult terms in order to get it. Often, these difficult terms include high prices and an agreement to waive a jury trial if something goes wrong. More often, these difficult terms impose crushing penalties, fees and other procedural handicaps that make it hard—if not impossible—for the party to prevail if there is a dispute. In practice, contract law allows powerful parties to impose their will on those who wish to acquire things they possess—and it is all legal.

There is nothing surprising about this. When human beings deal privately with one another, they always attempt to secure maximum advantages for themselves while assuming minimum risk. If one party has something the other needs, he can leverage that need to his advantage by negotiating extremely favorable terms. Of course, the same party could not secure extremely favorable terms if the buyer could go to a different seller. But in many commercial settings, individual buyers must obtain their goods through much more powerful sellers. When they do not have enough money to buy things outright, they must seek financing; and debt places them at a consummate disadvantage. In our society, very few people have enough money to buy all the things they need. They are stretched to the limit. In many cases, even “honest, hard-working people” have no choice but to take out loans for necessary items. In so doing, they expose themselves to creditors’ virtually unbridled legal power. Debtors are glorified beggars; and creditors have immense power over them. In debt relationships, contract law gets even uglier than usual. Yet debt is unavoidable for most people. In that sense, most people find themselves in an extremely unfavorable legal position. They sign contracts that subject them to brutal sanctions if they miss payments. They need the money. They take their chances that their income stream will remain intact to make their payments.

Many debtors make their payments. But life is not so kind to others. Perhaps a breadwinner dies or suffers an injury that forecloses him from work. Perhaps a debtor loses his job. Perhaps a debtor moves and bills get lost in the mail. Perhaps intervening expenses arise that wipe out a debtor’s savings, making it impossible to repay existing obligations. Perhaps a debtor has children who drain his income more than he could have imagined when he took out the loan. In America, most people cling desperately to financial stability. Their money is generally spoken for the moment they make it: rent; mortgage; taxes; clothing; food; car note; gas; tuition; student loan; credit card bill; utilities; medical expenses; dental expenses; the list goes on until the last penny is gone. They calculate their expenses to match their income stream. If there is an interruption, the entire financial structure unravels. And when a creditor does not receive a bargained-for, contractually-mandated payment from the unfortunate debtor, the creditor’s legal arsenal grinds into action. At these moments, contract law shows its true, pitiless colors. When creditors assert rights, somebody starts suffering.

I always found it perversely entertaining when creditors informed me that I owed “late fees” and “interest payments” if I failed to make a scheduled payment. This is standard contractual stuff. Loan contracts say that you must pay so-and-so amount on so-and-so date every month, plus interest (which may be raised at will and added to the principal). Then they say you must pay a special “extra fee” if you miss a payment. Why do creditors do this? If a person fails to make a payment, doesn’t that lead a reasonable person to conclude that he did not have the money to pay it? If that is true, how can a creditor expect a person to pay the payment he could not afford and extra fees? If a person does not have $400, he cannot pay $400 plus $250 in fees. In my view, this is sadism. It is like kicking people when they are down. Still, the law squarely favors the creditor in this situation. In the law’s view, you bargained for all the terms in the contract, no matter how counterintuitive or cruel. When you default, you entitle the creditor to apply all those terms against you, no matter how apparently unfair or oppressive. If the contract says the creditor can charge late fees and interest on your late payment, he can. It does not matter that you are broke. It does matter that you have children to feed. It is the creditor’s right. And the law enforces private contractual rights. It does not query whether they are oppressive or even ludicrous in practical effect. In short, contract law allows superior parties to exercise their rights over those who default, no matter how shameless it may be to do so. Those rights include the right to charge all the fees they defined in the contract, as well as obtaining a judgment for the full loan amount now. Once they obtain the judgment, they can legally seize all your cash and property to “satisfy” it, the same way a zookeeper “satisfies” a hungry lion with raw meat.

From a legal perspective, this all makes perfect sense: The debtor defaulted; he owes the amount; the debtor must pay. Yet from a practical and humanitarian perspective, this result is perverse. If a debtor cannot pay a monthly payment, how can a creditor reasonably believe that he can pay the entire loan amount now? If a person does not have money to pay $400, he obviously does not have money to pay $125,000, plus interest, fees and attorney’s costs. It defies imagination to think that the creditor could reasonably make these demands. But they do—all the time. Why? In my view, it is because the law gives creditors a smug feeling of total entitlement. Creditors believe that, because the law supports their position, they can do whatever the contract says they can. No matter how absurd the demand, the law permits it; thus the creditor feels he can make the demand in good conscience. It may be utterly impossible to wring $125,000 from a penniless debtor, but it makes the creditor feel good to crush him with legal process simply because he has the right to crush him. When people have commercial rights, they exercise them to the fullest. After all, rights are about power; when a person has power, he will exercise it. There is something distinctly human about rights. When people feel entitled to do something, they feel much better about doing it than they would if there were no such official imprimatur. The law gives exactly such an official imprimatur to the exercise of private commercial power. To answer the question “why” a creditor charges late fees on a debtor who obviously has no money to pay them, we must simply cite the smugness that flows from legal rights: “They do it because they can.”

Some may call this cynical nonsense. But I challenge anyone to provide me an example of a creditor who chooses not to exercise power over a debtor when the law permits. Do banks show mercy? Do commercial actors forgive? Here, we see that forgiveness and mercy necessarily involve rights. Specifically, to forgive someone, you must first have the right to punish him. Those who forgive have the right to visit hardship and pain on those who aggrieve them. Yet they forgo exercising their right because they pity their debtors, or at least understand that it would serve no purpose to punish them. Such values are entirely inconsistent both with the values of modern commerce and human nature. In commerce, people want to win profits. If exercising commercial rights allows them to win profits, they will not “forgive” those from whom they could rightfully obtain money or property. And human beings like to exercise power over their fellow men. It is in their nature to dominate others. If rights make it easier to tyrannize and dominate others, human beings will not forgo the great satisfaction they experience when they exercise their rights. That is just the way we are.

Christ may have admonished us to “forgive our trespassers.” But Christ never lent money. Nor did he write finance contracts with capitalized interest clauses. In fact, we can reasonably posit that Christ hated debt relationships and commerce in general because he overturned the moneylenders’ tables and "cast them out." Matthew 21:12-14.

In sum, debt relationships bring out the worst in both people and the law. Although legal theorists praise contract law because it allows “responsible people” to “prudently allocate risk and make sensible rules for themselves,” modern commerce belies the contention that there is equality between buyers and sellers. Modern commerce provides plentiful opportunities for strong parties to brutalize weaker ones because the law permits it. This is the dark side of legal rights. When human beings feel entitled to visit misery on others, they rarely forgo the chance. When the natural human impulse to dominate combines with the commercial impulse to win profits, the result is grim. Put simply, debtors do not stand a chance. In America, at least, they find themselves between a rock and a hard place: They must borrow money to buy necessities, to care for their health and to educate themselves. In so doing, they subject themselves to creditors’ “legal rights.” Those “rights” enable creditors to ruin debtors’ financial lives if there is any interruption at all in their tenuous income stream. It is not a pleasant way to live. And it never feels good to know that your entire life hangs on your ability to make regular payments, especially when experience confirms that life circumstances can change overnight. Today, you may be healthy and employed. Tomorrow, you may be paralyzed or laid off. But that means nothing to a creditor; he has his rights and you have your obligations. Unforeseen tragedy or disruption has no effect on his right to sink you. And he will exercise that right if he can.

True, our economy would not work if creditors forgave their debtors all the time. A “merciful economy” is a contradiction in terms. Commerce is warlike; warriors do not spare their foes or let their enemies escape. But that does not make our economy thematically appealing. In my view, forgiveness and mercy are positive qualities. Does it not say something about our society that such positive qualities simply do not belong in commercial life? To be blunt, we are engaged in a death struggle to fulfill obligations. When the law allows, we like to dominate our neighbors. We die if we fail to make payments. The law allows us our creditors to brutalize us, and it allows us to die. Guilt has nothing to do with it. No, contract law knows only power and survival, not conscience.

Perhaps the lesson is this: When possible, be a creditor. It is always better to be on top; and it is always easier to have the law on your side.