I'm reading a booklet about famous scams in history. This brings back memories of how most farm families left their kids, particularly unprepared again such scams. The book is a vignette description of earlier, but recurring scams with a surprising amount of inside knowledge. I'm stunned by how enduring the pyramid and Ponzi schemes are proven.
I ran a spreadsheet for the next 20 years over Project 21. While it's unlikely any of that will come to pass, I need only to make $8.67 a month to make it a better investment than average. Frank, a novelist, will be more concerned with the total return, which I will watch for, but not rely on.
[Author's note: I grew up and went to school in a small town. The memories just referred to are about how I used to pester my guidance teachers to explain how scams work. My declared intention was always to live in a city, and I wanted to know a scam when I saw one. The public education system let me down saying, if we told you, then you'll go do it and we will be held responsible. Well, I hold them irresponsible, which is even worse.]
Years later, when I was still occasionally bumping into people I knew from my hometown that had moved to the city, I listened to many a horror story of how they had been scammed time and again, because they were unprepared. They had paid $40 for two-dollar wristwatches and invested in worthless mining companies.
I realize now that these teachers lived in small towns themselves because they wouldn't admit they didn't know. The book I was reading was called Famous Financial Fiascoes, Train, New York, New York 1985. This book would have been banned in my hometown. Such information was always suppressed in small town libraries and public schools. I wonder how many lives were wrecked? Note, I draw the distinction of public schools and private schools. I attended a private Catholic school, St. Thomas Moore, for over two years and do not agree with current criticisms (which say the standards are too low). I received by comparison, and absolutely fine education there, which I still use daily.
[Author's note 2015-11-25: there is more to this situation that I can really describe. A teacher or counselor refusing to tell how bad things went, claiming he would be "responsible" if the student then went out and did wrong. That is teacher-stupid-think. We would never have doctors because such people would never allow the student to have a knife. There is no doubt I will have described this incident several times in this blog. A work of this size still centers on a collection of themes and incidents, it cannot be helped.]
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