Tuesday miscellany
- Is this the best fake-ID site on the planet? So some have said.
- On a more respectable note: Has anybody here ever used SmartyPig.com, the goal-oriented savings site? It pays higher interest than your local bank probably does, and for amounts that can be very small. (But as with the fake-ID site, I don’t have any personal experience. So caveat emptor and all that. And “high interest” these days is still, relatively speaking, a joke. Trillions go to foolish, but well-connected banksters; peons pocket a pittance.)
- More from Freedom’s Phoenix: Gotta love that Ernie Hancock. Here’s what happens when a “tentacle of the omnipotent state” (that is, a poor, befuddled census taker) probes his residence (short video).
- Free Marc Emery!
- Detoxing America after it hits bottom in its government addiction.
- This blog has recently been graced by the presence of SF writer Victor Milan (Hi, Victor!), who has a pretty good blog of his own. Here’s his take on the old “The enemy of my enemy is …”
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May 18th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
The fake ID web site is very intersting. If it isn’t a total scam to get somone to part with $85, it could have lots and lots of creative uses. Hmmm…
May 18th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
:-) Haven’t tried it myself, Matt. But the five-star rating it received (other link in the same item) comes from satisfied customers. I like their straightforwardness, too. These things are always risky. But I agree … that one’s interesting.
May 18th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Marc Emery is being extradited for selling seeds and donating a lot of money to charity.
Meanwhile banksters and politicos who have bilked the people out of trillions are free to do it again.
This government is completely illegitimate and will stop at nothing to control and silence true freedom fighters.
May 18th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Thanks for the kind words, Claire! Also, good to have you back on a regular basis.
May 18th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Keep getting a 404 on that ID site, you must have so many readers they took down the server :p
May 19th, 2010 at 6:18 am
I do not have any experience with SmartyPig (or West Bank who you are actually banking with there). I have a banking background, so I get asked by friends/relatives/strangers about this or that bank. One thing I always say is with on-line banks be careful. If you look at many of the bank failures, when the reserves get low they offered higher rates on money to pull in new customers and deposits to try and stay in business. This was the case with WaMu, IndyMac and NetBank.
I used to bank with NetBank, which was the only bank I have ever used that I actually liked. They had great customer service and paid the best interest around. One day I got an email basically saying “Hi. The FDIC has seized the assets of your bank this morning. Have a nice day.” My accounts were under the FDIC cap, so I got all my money back after a scary 2 days, but it left me very sensitive to what could happen.
After the 80s S&L crisis was over, you did not see many bank failures and the FDIC was strong. Recently, failures are an everyday occurrence (as of 5/11 68 failures in 2010) the rate has not much slowed despite being “through the crisis”. The FDIC is a mess now! So far they have been able to cover the deposits, but now they actually have to get money from the Treasury to do so. The FDIC fees no longer cover all the recent seizures. It is a house of cards. If you are simply printing up new dollars to cover the losses you can keep is going, but it never works in the long-term.
I know this blog is not about economics, but with a capital ratio of 2.3% (http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/04/21/the-uss-least-capitalized-big-bank-the-fed/) if the FED followed the same FDIC requirements all the member banks did they would have to shut down. No wonder they do not want to be audited!
I don’t mean to rant, but basically our banking system is a network of smoke, mirrors and the fastest printing press on the planet. You need to be careful of all banks, but especially those paying the best rates.
Credit is not a right, its a privilege. The better you manage your credit the lower rate you have have the pay on what you borrow. This is true on both sides of the lending equation. If I am a corporation with a AAA credit score I pay much less than say GM on what I borrow. As a bank, the worse off I am the more I am going to pay my customers to use me.
May 19th, 2010 at 7:32 am
Ellendra, I wish I had that many readers! Since I don’t … not sure why you’re getting a 404. The site continues to come up just fine for me. Try again?
G.W.F. … Thanks for the insights from the “been there, done that” department. And please feel free to rant so intelligently any time you’re so moved.
Victor … Damn good to have you here! And to see that you’re still going so strong on book writing despite scary health problems.
May 19th, 2010 at 8:30 am
Hey, I just got around to watching Ernie Hancock’s video; his C-taker was more pleasant than mine — and I was less forceful than he was. They must hire more patient people where he lives.
May 19th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Claire: The site is coming up fine tonight, it must have been a temporary glitch.
I’m still waiting for the census takers to come by. I work from home so its not like I missed them. I keep hoping to get it down on record that my race is “Elven” :p
I was sure I read here in one of your census posts about race being defined as a “self-identified classification”, with “no understandable factual basis”, but I can’t find that post. Anyway, I’ve been reposting that information to some of the otherkin forums that I’m on. I’ll be curious to see if that had any effect.
May 20th, 2010 at 12:32 am
“The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.”
So sayeth “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates”, as brought to us by Schlock Mercenary. (A delightful strip, I highly recommend it)
May 20th, 2010 at 10:34 am
True enough, Greybear.
Including about SCHLOCK MERCENARY, which I read daily.
And thanks again, Claire!
June 5th, 2010 at 9:13 am
[...] today I got a kind shout-out from freedom writer Claire Wolfe, whom I’ve never met but still consider a friend of sorts. [...]