29 July, 2016

An explanation (20/30) as to the parasitic nature of today's banks / global financial system

If you have read all my blogs and spent many a half hour thinking deeply, whilst gently nosing and sipping a fine Scottish Whisky whilst keeping an eye on the time with a COSC certified Swiss watch then you have passed. (The watch and whisky are optional discretionary purchases.)

You are now a David Watkinson certified Critical Thinker, Ordinary Level. Well done. It wasn't easy. Take a moment, enjoy the movement on your well crafted time piece and enjoy the smell of your single malt with a teaspoon of chilled distilled water. (Again, watch and whisky are at your own discretion.)

Now, I shall just give you my conclusion on banking and finance. You can critically think about it if you are concerned. Congratulations on passing, whether you passed first time or not is of no importance, well done.

Banks do not lend money, they extend bank credit. This basically means getting you to sign a piece of paper saying you will pay back both principal and interest or the government will use force against you. I don't know, prison or take some of your stuff, whatever, that would be your problem not mine. The banker then just types a new number into your account. Unbelievable but true.

Anyway, the idea of banking is to get a productive person to take a loan such that you can then easily steal from them. I.E interest payments on bank credit that only exists once typed into your account.

The world bank, IMF and others run the same scam on entire countries. Usually, those with oil & gas in abundance.

In summary, banks are scamming the entire human race.

There, no need to have any feelings whatsoever about who I am or whether I am correct. You are either interested or concerned and will do your own critical thinking or you you haven't actually passed.

The End?

22 July, 2016

What is real? (19/30)

Perhaps you may find it interesting to know what I discovered when I recently invested lots of my free time critically thinking about which watch to buy. I have guessed the answer is no and deleted lots of text but not all of it.

I started with Rolex. I ended up with a Casio and a Chinese watch. However, even the Casio was 'cased' in China and the watch strap has China written on it. I suspect that a great many luxury / expensive Swiss watches have some Chinese assembly or Chinese parts in them. Not Rolex but the others, I am not so sure.

After buying my two new watches I viewed a YouTube clip from a watch maker suggesting what type of watch to purchase. Neither of my watches met his criteria. He made his points clearly and I could not find fault with his advice. However, I am still just as happy with both watches.

The watch makers advice was to buy a standard Swiss movement, sapphire crystal, 100m minimum water resistance and a screw case back. Each of my watches only meets one or two of his criteria. I suggest you follow his advice. If you are spending less than one hundred pounds buy whatever you like the look of.

Google images is great for rapidly looking at a great many things to determine what it is that you have an affinity for. For example, most Rolex watches do not appeal to me and Breitling currently use the wrong font on their bezels.

By this stage, I am spending lots of time watching you tube videos and reading other people's views on watches. I am becoming knowledgeable, slightly obsessed but thoroughly enjoying myself. The pay off being buying the right watch or watches. I can now also chat (endlessly according to the girlfriend) about watches.

Critical thinking is much more than making good decisions. It is about being comfortable with yourself and your life. Bear in mind that your current life is largely determined by the results of all your previous decisions and your parents decisions when you were a youngling.

For me to say that critical thinking is important is me merely being modest. It is critical.

You take care.

16 July, 2016

Truthsaying (18/30)

It is good to develop and practice a new skill. Buying the right watch or torch may be trivial. Gut instinct and friends opinion should suffice. Is gut instinct and friends advice the way to go with everything? What about what is truly important, raising children and investing for their future?

Unfortunately, for 98% of the population the answer is yes. I must assume you are one of the two percent, or why read this? Perhaps you aspire to be in the 2%, I am more than happy to help you help yourself.

Critical Thought requires some basic research followed by evaluation of that research. You now have some idea of what you don't know. Time for more research and evaluation. Now, knowing what you now know, what will you research next? This is an iterative process without end.

Use or don't use critical thought, it is your choice and your responsibility.

Question everything, always.

A few paragraphs ago I mentioned two truly important things. Your children and their future. Now a drone would do whatever the 'state' told them to do. Get this inoculation, send them to us and we will 'educate' them. Financially, a drone would do what the 'state' told them to do. Pay into your 'state' pension, go see a 'state' sanctioned financial expert. The drones comply without thought. I see drones everywhere.

The truth really is inside us all.

15 July, 2016

Making Changes 403 (Fifty million?)

How much wealth should you store for retirement?

In the current system, we need to mainly work full time for forty years. What utter nonsense but there it is. So retire at 69 and die immediately. Or may be you expect up to twenty years of life, maximum. The mathematics is easy, store one third of the wealth you earn.

There are two problems with this, most cannot afford to do it. The other is the truly difficult problem. Wealth cannot be stored. Whatever you earn is spent by you or someone else. That is a massive thing to understand. Truly massive. Go for it.

For example, you win a thousand currency units on the national voluntary (stupidity tax) lottery and your government approved financial adviser gives you the only advice he can give you without losing his government licence to give you financial advice. He says that you ought to buy a government bond as you don't want any risk. Good luck with that.

A government bond is part of the financial scam you researched earlier. Or if you couldn't be bothered,  a safe investment vehicle. Enjoy the illusion of wealth. Obviously, the government bond was swapped for currency units which were then spent. Like I say, you spend the currency units or someone else will.

The name of this confidence trick / financial illusion is Ponzi Scheme. It works brilliantly until it doesn't. Obviously, when it doesn't we get to kill lots of Muslims probably. I will explain why the elite have picked Muslims as the target if I can be bothered, in a later post.

Question everyone in 'authority' until they yield that 'authority'. They have NO AUTHORITY that you don't give them. That is another massive concept to UNDERSTAND .

Two massive concepts in the one post. Notice I wrote that you need to understand them. Not that I need to explain them.

I will explain whatever you want for £50 million or fifty kilograms of gold.

Go on, do the mathematics and tell me my error. The error is yours.

10 July, 2016

Making Changes 402 (value according to my Dad)

This one is dedicated to my dad's wisdom

Let us imagine a typical boomer retiree. He saved 50 currency units 40 years ago. With the expected compounding interest of 7.2% this financial asset is now 'worth' 800 units but who to?

Generation X and Y now live in a world of zero interest rates. Why would we exchange currency units for a financial asset with no expectations of compounded growth? My government forces us to "put money into our pensions" at 2% of income. The joke is that we earn less than the boomers. We have zero expectations of the asset doubling in value each decade. The joke is on any boomer valuing their financial assets at par.

As my dad's says, ' it is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.'

Disposable income is tight on a millennial, expect around 100 currency units, not the 800 your government approved financial adviser will be legally bound to tell you.

So, where has the wealth gone? Well, CPI inflation has taken whatever the government failed to spend. The boomers can take comfort in the fact that their illusion of wealth is still believed, for the moment.

08 July, 2016

Nodding & winking (17/30)

Many people have firmly but politely pointed out that they do think critically fairly often. Good.

They also tell me that they do understand the world but agree that the vast majority don't.

I feel that I must agree. So, what everybody knows that everybody else knows is actually wrong.

In this post I hope to change that. I shall give two examples. Hopefully then what everybody knows everybody else knows will re-allign with what everybody individually knows.

Example 1, the Scotch Whisky Association promotes, protects and represents the interests of the whisky industry. That is what everybody knows everybody else knows. Individually, we can all have a critical think and understand that this is not actually true. The Scotch Whisky Association takes 'legal bribes' from the 'big boy's to keep the 'game' tilted in their favour.
Nods and winks all round.


Example 2, CSCO in Switzerland certify the accuracy and precision of Swiss watches. That is what everybody knows everybody else knows. Individually, we can all have a critical think and understand that this is not actually true. CSCO takes 'legal bribes' from the 'big boy's to keep the 'game' tilted in their favour.
Nods and winks all round.

So yes, what you know and I know, everybody knows. But, this differs immensely from what we all know everybody else knows.

Is this important? Yes because I have just described your government, twice.

Making Changes 401 (retirement)

The trend to reverse, is giving away your own power and responsibility to another person or group.

For example, your retirement.

You give away your responsibility to finance your own retirement to a politician.

Good luck with that.

Executing black people in the USA

Recently two black people have been executed. Actually, that isn't news. Black people are routinely executed. No, in the land of the free, police have been filmed executing two men.

Now I read that five policemen have been executed.

All of this is atrocious. Each atrocity births the next.

Now the Government has a choice. It can choose to end the atrocities. Close Guantanamo Bay, stop using exploding drones to indiscriminately kill. Stop blowing up hospitals, twice. Investigate and severely punish officers who respond differently to similar situations based on skin colour.

That would be the appropriate response of a Government in the land of the free.

It would be an obvious response. The leader of the free world is black. His wife is black. His children are black. He has held all this power for eight years. Yet young black men are routinely executed. This suggests a great many problems are not being addressed in the correct manner.

So, what would a corrupt and tyrannical government do? Well, pretty much what they have been doing. Give the police ex army weapons. Give the police more 'legal' power. Turn a blind eye to the use of excessive force. Just be simply 'saddened' when police are actually filmed executing young men.

Either things suddenly change, abruptly. Or one day it won't just be black men being executed it will be you and me.

The Jewish community are being very quiet. Have they not learned a thing?

Every community should be concerned. #everylifematters

Her Majesty has asked for calm, particularly in the political arena. I fully support Her Majesty in this and I hope Mr Obama sets an appropriate example as the elected leader of the free world.

Should he fail to do so, then government has failed us.

I call for calm. I call for several days of critical thought from everyone.

06 July, 2016

Designing a local currency system (very advanced / simple)

Very few people ever consider the workings of a financial system that they, for want of a better word, enslave themselves too for a lifetime.

Let us have a go at designing our own. Imagine, if you can, a small community. For whatever reason, they want to run a local currency system. The currency needs a name as people like names. I am going with Quatloos. Now we need prices. People like fixed prices. One Quatloo for a loaf of home baked bread, 15 minutes of baby sitting, a small basket of garden produce, ten minutes gardening and so forth.

Now, many such local currencies just issue a fixed amount of tokens to everyone but a problem soon develops. Someone hoards the tokens. Fewer tokens are in circulation and the project fails. In this example, I will be the banker and will loan the tokens out at 0 - 6% interest. Therefore, should someone hoard tokens and they become scarce, I am fully prepared to loan out more. Initial borrowers pay zero percent interest to get our local financial system started. Heavy borrowers must pay higher and higher interest rates to encourage them to earn local currency rather than continually spend.

We can also encourage the especially productive to return the Quatloos to me, the banker, for a fixed 3% interest rate.

Do you feel that the system is fair? Of course you do. That is what we all use and feel comfortable with anyway.

As the banker, I simply love the system. Even if I generally loan at just 2%, I will soon have the largest hoard of Quatloos for very little work.

How? Let us say I have loaned out 1,000 Quatloos at 2%. That is 20 quatloos to me every year. Should 100 of the loaned out Quatloos find themselves in my one year fixed rate fixed term savings account, then that is 3 Quatloos, leaving me with 17. Which I can readily exchange for 17 essentially free loaves of bread, each year.

All I really need is more people using my quatloos for me to become immensely wealthy.

None of that is likely to bother anyone. I have to provide the Quatloos, administer the loans and keep records.

Now, our financial system is, more or less, identical to the 'real' one. The banks are far greedier than I, so interest rates on savings is low and interest rates on loans much higher.

Nothing to worry about? Nothing to be concerned about?

Let us imagine, for whatever reason, my Quatloo currency catches on. The entire village of 2,000 homes is using it. Lots of baby sitting is happening, lots of local produce being grown, gardening, ironing, DIY and the rest of it, all using Quatloos.

You might ask why? Perhaps the three percent on savings is enticing. Or perhaps the low finance rates? I'd like to think it was a community spirit type of thing. Perhaps, this financial system actually contributes to humanity?

Now, with the entire village on board and everybody doing something for the local currency, there could easily be 50,000 Quatloos in circulation. Each household spending / earning just 25 Quatloos each week. My take is now 850 a year. Which is nice.

With all the village on board, maybe there is some community work that could be done? Building a village pond? Revitalizing part of a disused canal? Restoring some public footpaths? The bank could easily loan any amount of Quatloos into existence but who to and who would pay the loan back? Easy, a small village council of elders could borrow and organise the village works. A small tax on the community could pay the loan back.

Beginning to feel uncomfortable yet? I am. What was a local currency that encouraged local people to produce goods and services locally is now a means to centralise a portion of Quatloo wealth into the hands of a select few. All manner of scans could now readily arise.

So, whichever Government is in power, they need to be watched like hawks to ensure that they are using our collective wealth wisely.

The banks only provide a public service. They should not be allowed to accumulate vast amounts of our wealth.

I might think a little too deeply. In my Quatloo example, the wealth is easily seen to be generated by the people in the village. Me, the bank, has no actual wealth, I just issue the Quatloos and keep records. The same is true of the real world. We just don't understand how.

There is no difference between the Quatloos I made up earlier and our pounds, dollars or euros. NONE. Well actually, one difference. You are forced to accept a pound in settlement of a debt, no one is forcing you to use a Quatloo or any of the many local currencies or global ones, such as bitcoin or gold and silver.

Provided the banks never get greedy or our Politicians lie then the Quatloo, pound, dollar or Euro system works fine.

In my village system, humanity is encouraged and local works would be undertaken from bank profits. One off taxes to directly fund local projects unnecessary.

Should the Quatloo catch on, banks and governments would be rendered bankrupt and powerless fairly quickly. So, how would I fund roads, rail, armies, hospitals and schools? Easily, I would free issue Quatloos to any and all institutions we, as a civilised human and humane society, felt were of value.

Put simply, my Quatloo financial system is simple. Our actual financial system is absurd.

In our actual 'real' system, things have already gone far too far. Humanity is being crushed and not encouraged. I am sickened to my bones. This is the motivation behind this blog.

Not convinced? Is that your conditioning kicking in? Just give it some critical thought.

By the way, I don't much care for your thoughts on my pretend Quatloo financial system. Just on your own dollar, pound or Euro system. For the obvious reason, I have only just made it up to compare it with what we have inherited from hundreds of years ago.

I use pounds but I treat them as I would Quatloos. Pounds are for spending, a few saved for emergencies is wise. Storing wealth is problematic. Having a pension fund with a million dollars in it might sound good but try telling someone you have a million Quatloos. Dollars and Quatloos are fundamentally the same. Have a Critical think about that too, I have.

If you haven't understood something in this post, please feel free to ask a question in the comments section.

You take care and remember, a dollar, a pound, a Euro or a Quatloo are all worth about the same. NOTHING, unless you and your family and your village and your town and your country decide it is. The banks and governments really do want you to believe because the moment you don't, both banks and government collapse.

What do I believe? A dollar is worth a pound is worth a Euro is worth exactly one Quatloo, in other words - NOWT (nothing)

A word to the boomers about their pensions. BOOM.
The technical word is ILLIQUIDITY.