WAIT A MINUTE! Don’t jump to conclusions . . . this isn’t a “hit piece,” a partisan political screed.
This is a reasoned, rational, objective comparison of three protean figures who experienced heady, exhilarating success, only to crash and burn when the foundation on which they built that success could not support or sustain it.
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Pat Boone accuses President Obama of engaging in Ponzi-style politics.
(AP Images) |
First, to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. That’s where I went, and where I want to take you.
Most people, perhaps like you and me, have some understanding of what a “Ponzi scheme” is, that it’s some kind of scam in which somebody fools a lot of people into thinking they’re going to become rich, but instead lose their shirts. And that’s true, in general.
But you need to know more fully what a Ponzi scheme is.
Here’s the best definition I’ve come across: a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money — or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from the profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation.
The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering higher returns than other investments in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. Perpetuation of the high returns requires an ever increasing flow of new investors to keep the scheme going.
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The system is destined to collapse, inevitably. Because the earnings — if any — are less than the payments to investors. Usually the scheme is interrupted by legal authorities before the certain collapse. As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases.
Do you see it? The moment more people are standing in line to get the “easy money” from their investments, with their hands out in expectation — with fewer new dupes lining up to pour more money into the proposition — the whole thing is doomed.
But it was doomed from the beginning. It was built on a fraudulent fantasy.
In the 1920s, Charles Ponzi actually promised new investors a 50 percent return in 45 days, and a likely 100 percent return in 90 days! And as long as gullible new investors kept pouring money into Ponzi’s pockets, he kept doling out new payments to the earlier investors, and they brought in more new suckers.
Eventually, heady with his own success, he was promising 400 percent returns and more, assuming the new suckers would keep coming in ever greater numbers.
Incredible? Of course. It was incredible, and it crashed, bankrupting Ponzi and most of his suckers. He also went to prison.
Then, a few years ago, along came Bernie Madoff.
Like Charles Ponzi, Bernard Madoff actually had a generally respectable financial career before his grand fraud took shape.
He was the non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and founder of his own firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, which he ran from a startup in 1960 until his arrest on Dec. 11, 2008.
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Somewhere along the line, Madoff realized he could sell wealthy individuals and major philanthropic foundations on his mysterious ability to make them wonderful profits — if they would just give him piles of money and trust him to manage them. And they did! Intelligent people, experienced managers and chairmen of important charities turned billions of dollars over to Madoff, and sat back unquestioningly waiting for their 100 percent profits, or better.
For a few years, as the monies under his management grew to an estimated $65 billion, Madoff kept almost half his investors happy by feeding partial returns back to them, keeping later investors waiting.
He wasn’t investing their money in anything except huge bank accounts out of which he doled some returns to the most impatient clients. And for a few years, he was the toast of the financial community, living lavishly, buying estates and yachts and giving generously to many worthy causes.
But the day of reckoning came. Finally and inevitably, the huge demands for returns outstripped the incoming new investments.
The whole fantastic scheme imploded, the law descended on hapless Bernie, and he was sentenced to 150 YEARS IN JAIL! He’ll be there until he dies.
What’s the point of all this? My friends, my poor deluded fellow Americans, the policies of the current occupant of the White House makes these charlatans — two of the biggest swindlers in human history — look like small time side show barkers or street hustlers — and that's no way to run this great country.
A charmer he can be, for sure, and a very capable reader of written scripts on teleprompters. He’s evidently becoming a practiced golfer and has a good three-point basketball shot. He and his wife and two daughters look very nice on stages and are excellent symbols of the increasing colorblindness and lack of prejudice in these United States.
But Mr. Obama came to the presidency with absolutely no experience in the qualities demanded of the office. He never ran a business of any kind, and has no grasp of finance, let alone our giant, complex economy.
Personally, I doubt he could successfully run a 7/11 or Starbucks. That takes a sense of budget, cost accounting and stocking what customers want and will buy. No businessman can decide what the customer must buy and what he must pay for it. That’s what our founders called “taxation without representation.”
That concept brought on our American Revolution. We wouldn’t stand for it then. And we’ve got to reject it now.
Look objectively at what’s happened. This White House team has taken over two of our Big Three automakers, big banks and our whole healthcare system, saddling you and me and our descendants with bankruptcy, and squandering trillions of paper dollars that are just that — paper — with no substance to give them value.
Billions have been spent on hopeless energy boondoggles like Solyndra created by a big Obama donor.
This is a classic Ponzi scheme: promise everything in the world, grab all the money you can (in this case trillions!), placate some and ignore others — and finally let the whole thing collapse.
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And for the last four years, while flying all over the country in Air Force One attending, at last count, more than 120 major fundraisers for his re-election campaign, he has snake charmed Congress into piling over $6 trillion of unpayable debt on American taxpayers. That’s more than $56,000 of debt on every man, woman and child in the country. If re-elected, he intends to double or triple that burden! Did you agree to this? Are you happy with it?
Move over, Ponzi and Madoff — Mr. Obama has made you look like amateurs.
Pat Boone's public career spans a half-century, during which he has been a top-selling recording artist, the star of a hit television series, a movie star, a Broadway headliner, and a best-selling author. He is also a great-great-grandson of the legendary pioneer Daniel Boone. Read more reports from Pat Boone — Click Here Now.
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