In a message dated 7/11/2004 3:13:15 PM Central Standard
Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Cynical jaded New Yorker wants to know: When you lend someone
counterfeit money, are you still doing that person a good turn? Should
expect repayment, with interest? In real or counterfeit
money?
Comment
Actually a friend of mine . . . a comrade . . . did a 5 to
10 year bit in Mississippi for counterfit 20s in the late mid 1980s. JHe got
caught up in the "New African thing" and the "Black Liberation Army" and
literally named his first born male SinQ.
I was like . . . "damn brother . . . don't you
think you carrying this thing a little to far?"
Counterfeit was never my thing as such and I figured if
I could not win at the poker table . . . or . . . 7 days 12 hours was enough
for me. Then the first wife worked at the old Cadillac plant on Michigan . . .
not the Fisher plant on Fort Street. :-)
Counterfeit and its exchange rates depends on what is being
exchanged. And yes you can get interest on it in all the secondary markets.
Counterfeit money is no different from when a section of Soviet society - the
secondary economy, was using Marlboros as a medium of exchange. The only
objection to counterfeit in the world exchange markets is the governments and
banks that prevents its conversion. You can circulate counterfeit within a
certain market framework forever and it develops its own logic.
Is not the real question the counterfeit nature of fiat
money versus species money?
I read some book twenty years ago . . . that I honestly
forget . . . that placed quarters as the most counterfeit money.
The only problem anyone in society has with counterfeit
money is the point at which its conversion is blocked.
No one really cares.
Ok . . . I stop by your house and we go get some beers
and watch the Yankees on the big screen. I set the bar up a couple of times
and lose the bet and set the bar up again paying with good counterfeit . . .
that cannot be detected with a brown colored pen. (I did work in a Casino and
they have tough procedures. Only governments detect good counterfeit produced
by other governments with similar technology).
The barkeep cannot detect the counterfeit and it completes a
transaction. This counterfiet is passed - unknowing to the barkeep, as change
for his customers. Really we talking about the value relationship.
I cannot think of the book I read years ago but it had a
story about a guy in the late 1890 who literally painted 50 dollar bills. When
he got busted . . . the judge let him off over a dispute about who could issue
legal tender.
I hate it when I forget what I remember.
Melvin P.
