Money Withdrawal Quotes

Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you're a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you're not free. And you can't hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you're forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others.

It was not long before I discovered that withdrawing addicts lost their composure in exactly the same manner that careless millionaires lose their money: gradually, then suddenly.

I don't purchase people with money, or hiss like a snake to attract their attention, all i do is to rest on my couch because i have the conviction that no human can progress with an exception without a power behind.

But rules for sustainability, like every workable social rule, would be put into place not to destroy freedoms, but to create freedoms or to protect them. A ban on bank robbing inhibits the freedom of the thief in order to assure that everyone else has the freedom to deposit and withdraw money safely. A ban on overuse of a renewable resource or on the generation of a dangerous pollutant protects vital freedoms in a similar way.

For each now strives to isolate his person as much as possible from the others, wishing to experience within himself life's completeness, yet from all his efforts there results not life's completeness but a complete suicide, for instead of discovering the true nature of their being they lapse into total solitariness. For in our era all are isolated into individuals, each retires solitary within his burrow, each withdraws from the other, conceals himself and that which he possesses, and ends by being rejected of men and by rejecting them. He ammasses wealth in solitariness, thinking: how strong I am now and how secure, yet he does not know, the witless one, that the more he ammasses, the further he will sink into suicidal impotence. For he has become accustomed to relying upon himself alone has isolated himself from the whole as an individual, has trained his soul not to trust in help from others, in human beings and mankind, and is fearful only of losing his money and privileges he has acquired. In every place today the human mind is mockingly starting to lose its awareness of the fact that a person's true security consists not in his own personal, solitary effort, but in the common integrity of human kind.

Imagine a person who enjoys alcohol, perhaps a bit too much. He has a quick three or four drinks. His blood alcohol level spikes sharply. This can be extremely exhilarating, particularly for someone who has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism.23 But it only occurs while blood alcohol levels are actively rising, and that only continues if the drinker keeps drinking. When he stops, not only does his blood alcohol level plateau and then start to sink, but his body begins to produce a variety of toxins, as it metabolizes the ethanol already consumed. He also starts to experience alcohol withdrawal, as the anxiety systems that were suppressed during intoxication start to hyper-respond. A hangover is alcohol withdrawal (which quite frequently kills withdrawing alcoholics), and it starts all too soon after drinking ceases. To continue the warm glow, and stave off the unpleasant aftermath, the drinker may just continue to drink, until all the liquor in his house is consumed, the bars are closed and his money is spent. The next day, the drinker wakes up, badly hungover. So far, this is just unfortunate. The real trouble starts when he discovers that his hangover can be “cured” with a few more drinks the morning after. Such a cure is, of course, temporary. It merely pushes the withdrawal symptoms a bit further into the future. But that might be what is required, in the short term, if the misery is sufficiently acute. So now he has learned to drink to cure his hangover. When the medication causes the disease, a positive feedback loop has been established.

The greatest fear of a professional investor, who manages money for a living, is capital withdrawals at the wrong time.

I have to determine for myself, and not for other men. I don’t blame them, or think I am better than they; their circumstances are different. I would never choose to withdraw myself from the labour and common burden of the world; but I do choose to withdraw myself from the push and the scramble for money and position. Any man is at liberty to call me a fool, and say that mankind are benefited by the push and the scramble in the long-run. But I care for the people who live now and will not be living when the long-run comes. As it is, I prefer going shares with the unlucky.

Listen very carefully. Because I'm only going to lay this out for you once. I'm no longer the easy prey I once was and if you go up against me I will make sure you end up behind bars. You've fraudulently pocketed the money from the video. Our lawyers already have a criminal suit against you ready to go. Unless you're particularly keen on jail, you will leave my family alone, and you will withdraw the video and return all that money to the people you stole it from." Julia opened her mouth, but Trisha held up her hand and she closed it. "And if you do one thing to harm DJ"- because suddenly Trisha was sure Julia had something on DJ; her nineties-Bollywood-plot theory didn't seem so farfetched- "I will make sure that every one of the families you've preyed on to make money off their tragedies gets together and sues your ass until every penny you've ever leeched is gone. Now get out of my office. Get out of my building- which by the way is private property. Soliciting business here is illegal. So the next time you think of setting foot here, know that I will have security throw you out on your cowardly, pathetic ass.

What Is Trust? There are many different models and definitions of trust in the published literature. However, the focus of this book is to learn to build and maintain trust in the workplace. For this purpose, trust is defined as choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions. When you trust someone, what you make vulnerable can range from concrete things such as money, a job, a promotion, or a particular goal, to less tangible things like a belief you hold, a cherished way of doing things, your “good name,” or even your sense of happiness and well being. Whatever you choose to make vulnerable to the other’s actions, you do so because you believe their actions will support it or, at the very least, will not harm it. Some people tend to extend trust to others easily and with little or no evidence it is warranted. They only withdraw their trust it if is betrayed. Others believe that people must earn their trust by demonstrating trustworthiness. Whether you tend to extend trust more or less easily, you do so by assessing the probability that the other person will support or harm what you value in the future. In this sense choosing to trust or distrust is a risk assessment.

Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. - The Book of Disquiet

If your teacher is in a private, for-profit school, however, and you withdraw your child, then the owner of the school will quickly feel the effect in his pocket, and the bad teacher will be fired. In a free system the parent, the consumer, is the boss. Tooley found that private-school proprietors constantly monitor their teachers and follow up parents’ complaints. His team visited classrooms in various parts of India and Africa, and found teachers actually teaching in fewer of the government classrooms they visited than in private classrooms – sometimes little more than half as many. Despite having no public funds or aid money, the unrecognised private schools had better facilities such as toilets, electricity and blackboards. Their pupils also got better results, especially in English and mathematics. The

Looking at international economic life brings to mind the ancient image of the world riding on the back of a turtle—only in reality, the turtle is a woman. She inches along, laboring just beneath the level of economic visibility, often blaming herself for not being able to bear more weight. Occasionally, she retreats into her shell, as if withdrawal were the only form of rebellion. But only when she upsets its balance will the world roll off her back.

JFK asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to break up organized crime. Nobody high-up in government has tangled the Mafia. J. E. Hoover, the hired hands of FBI and CIA, ran the assassination teams. They have been used since World War II. JFK was attempting to end the oil-tax depletion rip-offs, to get tax money from oil companies. JFK instituted the nuclear test ban treaty, often called “the kiss of death,” to oppose the Pentagon. JFK called off the Invasion of Cuba. He allowed Castro to live, antagonized narcotics and gambling, oil and sugar interests, formerly in Cuba. JFK asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to break up the CIA, the “hidden government behind my back.” Allen Dulles was fired. Dulles, the attorney for international multinationals, was angry. JFK planned to withdraw troops from Vietnam after the 1964 elections. Nov. 24, 1963, two days after JFK’s burial, the Pentagon escalated the Vietnam war … with no known provocations, after JFK was gone. There was no chance Kennedy could survive antagonizing the CIA, oil companies, Pentagon, organized crime. He was not their man. The assassination of JFK employed people from the Texas-Southwest. It was not a Southern plot. Upstarts could not have controlled the northern CIA, FBI, Kennedy family connections. This was a more detailed, sophisticated conspiracy that was to set the pattern for future murders to take place. The murder was funded by Permindex, with headquarters in Montreal and Switzerland. Their stated purpose was to encourage trade between nations in the Western world. Their actual purpose was fourfold: 1) To fund and direct assassinations of European, Mid-East and world leaders considered threats to the western world, and to Petroleum Interests of their backers. 2) Provide couriers, agents for transporting and depositing funds through Swiss Banks for Vegas, Miami and the international gambling syndicate. 3) Coordinate the espionage activities of White Russian Solidarists and Division V of the FBI, headed by William Sullivan. 4) Build, acquire and operate hotels and gambling casinos. See: Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal, by William Torbitt.

What about the Erdahl family?” “Kevin’s dad is withdrawing his money, obviously. Switching it to Hed instead. He wants to crush us, naturally. And if Kevin doesn’t get convicted in court for . . . everything that’s happened, then . . . well, he’ll be playing for Hed too. All our best players will follow him.” Peter leans against the wall. Smiles sadly. “So, good news and bad news, then.” “The good news is that you’re still GM. The bad is that I’m not sure we’re even going to have a club next season for you to be GM of.” He turns to go, but changes his mind. He looks

In 2000, John Duthie won the Poker Million on the Isle of Man. He was in the newspapers, he was on television. The first player to win £1,000,000 outside America. Knowing himself, Duthie had the cleverest idea of all time: he put a chunk of the money away, for mortgages and children’s education, in a bank account that he opened jointly with his father-in-law. Brilliant. If it had been a joint account with his wife, he might have phoned her from a casino one desperate night and begged her to co-sign a big withdrawal slip. But a call like that to his wife’s father? Never.

Whether we are squander­ ing resources by over- or underinvesting in microprocessors or steel can be revealed only by the message contained in the relative profita­ bility of rival firms in these industries. But this is precisely the infor­ mation we garble when we channel money toward one or another of the contenders. Deprived of its elimination process, the market would no longer be able to serve its function as a method for discov­ ering better and eliminating worse production techniques. Without the necessity of responding to consumers' wants or needs, businesses would never withdraw from unprofitable avenues of production

Life is a tiring business indeed. Soy sauce runs out. Milk runs out. Dishwashing detergent runs out. Lancôme lipsticks—I thought I had stockpiled several years' worth—run out. Dust underneath the dining table becomes dust balls. Newspapers and magazines pile up, and so does laundry. E-mail and junk mail keep coming. When occasion demands, I make myself presentable and I present myself. I listen to my sister's same old complaints on the phone. I withdraw money for my elderly mother, whose tongue works fine but whose body is a mess. I contact her caseworker. And now I have reached a stage in life when my own health is prone to betray me.

An Act for establishing religious Freedom. Section 1 Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time; That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical; That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry, That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right, That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it; That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

And in the business with Gauguin too, perhaps. Let’s wait and see. I thought that he was on the rocks, and there I was with money, and this boy who does better work than I do with none; so I said, He ought to have half of mine, and let him, if he likes. But if Gauguin isn’t on the rocks, then I am in no great hurry. And I withdraw my proposal categorically, and the only question left for me is simply this: if I looked for a comrade to work with, would it be a good thing, would it be to my brother’s advantage and mine, and would the other fellow lose by it, or would he gain? These are the questions that my mind is running on, but they’d have to come up against reality to become facts.

Swamiji, I am puzzled about following your instruction. Suppose I never ask for food, and nobody gives me any. I should starve to death". "Die then!" This alarming counsel split the air. Die if you must, Mukanda! Never believe that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment. He who has bestowed appetite, will inevitably see that His devotee is maintained. Do not imagine that rice sustains you nor that money or men support you. Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life breath? They are His instruments merely. Is it by any skill of yours that food digests in your stomach? Use the sword of your discrimination, Mukanda! Cut through the chains of agency and perceive the Single Cause!

At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, etc. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the millowners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once filled them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food--of the sinking health, of the dying life of those near and dear to him. The contrast is too great. Why should he alone suffer from bad times?

Restrictionism, however, demands positive sacrifices from the national exchequer when it is carried out by the withdrawal of notes from circulation (say through the issue of interest-bearing bonds or through taxation) and their cancellation. The unpopularity of restrictionism has other causes as well. Attempts to raise the objective exchange-value of money, in the circumstances that have existed, have necessarily been limited either to single States or to a few States and at the best have had only a very small prospect of simultaneous realization throughout the whole world. Now as soon as a single country or a few countries go over to a money with a rising purchasing power, while the other countries retain a money with a falling or stationary exchange-value, or one which although it may be rising in value is not rising to the same extent, then, as has been demonstrated above, the conditions of international trade are modified. In the country whose money is rising in value, exportation becomes more difficult and importation easier.

Well, buying an annuity means you give the insurance company a lump sum—say, $500,000 at age 60—and in return you get a guaranteed monthly payout (for example, $2,400 each month) for the rest of your life, however long that happens to be. Like all insurance, annuities aren’t free—insurance companies have to make money to stay in business!—but if your goal is to maximize the life experiences you can buy with the money you’ve earned, they’re a very sensible solution. That’s partly because, even after the insurance company’s fees, your monthly payouts amount to more than you would probably be willing to pay yourself if you wanted to make sure you didn’t outlive your money. For example, one popular rule of thumb for retirement spending is the “4 percent rule,” whereby you withdraw 4 percent from your savings each year of retirement. Well, with annuities, your annual payouts will probably amount to more than 4 percent of what you put into the annuity—and, unlike the 4 percent withdrawals, those payouts are guaranteed to continue for the rest of your life.

At first the social worker may become too emotionally involved with his clients, so that when they fail he suffers, both because they are unhappy and because their failure is his failure, too. It’s hard to spend his days confronting devastating problems that he cannot fix—the misery and helplessness rub off on him. It may seem to him that to feel happy or spend money on himself is to betray the people he knows who are still suffering; or it may seem that his own unhappiness is a sign of his devotion. Perhaps he becomes angry, blaming systems and society for what he cannot fix himself. Gradually, he learns to be more detached. He realizes that he needs to be tough, and to develop a thick skin. But if he becomes too detached, he stops caring about his clients at all. Perhaps he withdraws into cynicism and self-defense, as he feels his ideals and his sense of potency wither. Longer-serving people in the office notice the waning of his enthusiasm, and welcome him to their gallows-humor fellowship. He retreats into apathy and jokes and drinks after work. But even with his fellow apathetics to keep him company, the situation is depressing, and he looks for a way out.

But because," he continues, "in this mad world of ambition where chicanery so frequently twists right into wrong, simplicity is hardly safe, and is always sure to meet with more that hinders than helps it, we ought indeed to withdraw from the forum and public life, but a great mind has an opportunity to display itself freely even in private life; nor, just as the activity of lions and animals is restrained by their dens, is it so of man's, whose greatest achievements are wrought in retirement. Let a man, however, hide himself away bearing in mind that, wherever be secretes his leisure, he should be willing to benefit the individual man and mankind by his intellect, his voice, and his counsel. For the man that does good service to the state is not merely he who brings forward candidates and defends the accused and votes for peace and war, but he also who admonishes young men, who instills virtue into their minds, supplying the great lack of good teachers, who lays hold upon those that are rushing wildly in pursuit of money and luxury, and draws them back, and, if he accomplishes nothing else, at least retards them — such a man performs a public service even in private life.

Back in America, Donald Trump had, as a candidate, preached the virtues of withdrawal. “We should leave Afghanistan immediately,” he had said. The war was “wasting our money,” “a total and complete disaster.” But, once in office, Donald Trump, and a national security team dominated by generals, pressed for escalation. Richard Holbrooke had spent his final days alarmed at the dominance of generals in Obama’s Afghanistan review, but Trump expanded this phenomenon almost to the point of parody. General Mattis as secretary of defense, General H. R. McMaster as national security advisor, and retired general John F. Kelly formed the backbone of the Trump administration’s Afghanistan review. In front of a room full of servicemen and women at Fort Myer Army Base, in Arlington, Virginia, backed by the flags of the branches of the US military, Trump announced that America would double down in Afghanistan. A month later, General Mattis ordered the first of thousands of new American troops into the country. It was a foregone conclusion: the year before Trump entered office, the military had already begun quietly testing public messaging, informing the public that America would be in Afghanistan for decades, not years. After the announcement, the same language cropped up again, this time from Trump surrogates who compared the commitment not to other counterterrorism operations, but to America’s troop commitments in Korea, Germany, and Japan. “We are with you in this fight,” the top general in Afghanistan, John Nicholson, Jr., told an audience of Afghans. “We will stay with you.

His great concern had to do with the fact that private fortunes were significantly outpacing investments in public services like schools, parks, and safety net programs. The process tends to begin gradually before accelerating under its own momentum. As people accumulate more money, they become less dependent on public goods and, in turn, less interested in supporting them. If they get their way, through tax breaks and other means, personal fortunes grow while public goods are allowed to deteriorate. As public housing, public education, and public transportation become poorer, they become increasingly, then almost exclusively, used only by the poor themselves.[6] People then begin to denigrate the public sector altogether, as if it were rotten at the root and not something the rich had found it in their interest to destroy. The rich and the poor soon unite in their animosity toward public goods—the rich because they are made to pay for things they don’t need and the poor because what they need has become shabby and broken. Things collectively shared, especially if they are shared across class and racial divides, come to be seen as lesser. In America, a clear marker of poverty is one’s reliance on public services, and a clear marker of affluence is one’s degree of distance from them. Enough money brings “financial independence,” which tellingly does not signal independence from work but from the public sector. There was a time when Americans wished to be free of bosses. Now we wish to be free of bus drivers. We wish for the freedom to withdraw from the wider community and sequester ourselves in a more exclusive one, pulling further and further away from the poor until the world they inhabit becomes utterly unrecognizable to us.[7]

With or without the Chinese, Calcutta was dead. Partition had deprived it of half its hinterland and burdened it with a vast dispirited refugee population. Even Nature had turned: the Hooghly was silting up. But Calcutta’s death was also of the heart. With its thin glitter, its filth and overpopulation, its tainted money, its exhaustion, it held the total Indian tragedy and the terrible British failure. Here the Indo-British encounter had at one time promised to be fruitful. Here the Indian renaissance had begun: so many of the great names of Indian reform are Bengali. But it was here, too, that the encounter had ended in mutual recoil. The cross-fertilization had not occurred, and Indian energy had turned sour. Once Bengal led India, in ideas and idealism; now, just forty years later, Calcutta, even to Indians, was a word of terror, conveying crowds, cholera and corruption. Its aesthetic impulses had not faded – there was an appealing sensibility in every Bengali souvenir, every over-exploited refugee ‘craft’ – but they, pathetically, threw into relief the greater decay. Calcutta had no leaders now, and apart from Ray, the film director, and Janah, the photographer, had no great names. It had withdrawn from the Indian experiment, as area after area of India was withdrawing, individual after individual. The British, who had built Calcutta, had ever been withdrawn from their creation; and they survived. Their business houses still flourished in Chownringhee; and to the Indians, products of the dead Indian renaissance, who now sat in some of the air-conditioned offices, Independence had meant no more than this: the opportunity to withdraw, British-like, from India. What then was the India that was left, for which one felt such concern? Was it no more than a word, an idea?

Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvellous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white cones and sweet honey from my old failures. Antonio Machado, “Last Night” (translated by Robert Bly) I once heard someone ask for the definition of adult. I can’t remember where I was, or who the speaker was who answered the question, but I’ll never forget the answer: “Adult means choice.” As children, most of us had little or no say in most matters. My generation was taught that children should be seen and not heard. We were told to “do as I say, not as I do.” We didn’t have a “vote” in family matters because we were “just children.” Picture this scenario if you will. Five-year-old Jerry has just received his umpteenth whipping or scolding. He turns to his parents and says, “You know, Mom and Dad, I choose not to be abused anymore. I’ll be taking the car keys, withdrawing some money from our joint account, and moving to Florida to live with Grandma and Grandpa. When you both start acting like adults, give me a call, and we’ll discuss the conditions of my return. We’ll see if we can settle on a mutual arrangement where you two stay adult as much of the time as possible, and I’ll be a kid who learns how to make healthy choices by being disciplined instead of punished. We’ll negotiate how you will set healthy boundaries so I can learn to do the same. For now, I’ll be seeing you. Don’t forget to write. And don’t forget to read John Lee’s book on regression. I’m too young, but you’re not.” As children, we did not have the choice of laying down the law for our frequently regressing parents. But as adults we can certainly choose to draw our boundaries and express our needs in all of our relationships as adults—not only with our parents, but also with our spouses, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.

One of the greatest difficulties we human beings seem to have is to relinquish long-held ideas. Many of us are addicted to being right, even if facts do not support us. One fixed image we cling to, as iconic in today’s culture as the devil was in previous ages, is that of the addict as an unsavoury and shadowy character, given to criminal activity. What we don’t see is how we’ve contributed to making him a criminal. There is nothing more intrinsically criminal in the average drug user than in the average cigarette smoker or alcohol addict. The drugs they inject or inhale do not themselves induce criminal activity by their pharmacological effect, except perhaps in the way that alcohol can also fuel a person’s pent-up aggression and remove the mental inhibitions that thwart violence. Stimulant drugs may have that effect on some users, but narcotics like heroin do not; on the contrary, they tend to calm people down. It is withdrawal from opiates that makes people physically ill, irritable and more likely to act violently — mostly out of desperation to replenish their supply. The criminality associated with addiction follows directly from the need to raise money to purchase drugs at prices that are artificially inflated owing to their illegality. The addict shoplifts, steals and robs because it’s the only way she can obtain the funds to pay the dealer. History has demonstrated many times over that people will transgress laws and resist coercion when it comes to struggling for their basic needs — or what they perceive as such. Sam Sullivan, Vancouver’s quadriplegic mayor, told a conference on drug addiction once that if wheelchairs were illegal, he would do anything to get one, no matter what laws he had to break. It was an apt comparison: the hardcore addict feels equally handicapped without his substances. As we have seen, many addicts who deal in drugs do so exclusively to finance their habit. There is no profit in it for them.

Between 2003 and 2008, Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, borrowed over $140 billion, a figure equal to ten times the country’s GDP, dwarfing its central bank’s $2.5 billion reserves. A handful of entrepreneurs, egged on by their then government, embarked on an unprecedented international spending binge, buying everything from Danish department stores to West Ham Football Club, while a sizeable proportion of the rest of the adult population enthusiastically embraced the kind of cockamamie financial strategies usually only mooted in Nigerian spam emails – taking out loans in Japanese Yen, for example, or mortgaging their houses in Swiss francs. One minute the Icelanders were up to their waists in fish guts, the next they they were weighing up the options lists on their new Porsche Cayennes. The tales of un-Nordic excess are legion: Elton John was flown in to sing one song at a birthday party; private jets were booked like they were taxis; people thought nothing of spending £5,000 on bottles of single malt whisky, or £100,000 on hunting weekends in the English countryside. The chief executive of the London arm of Kaupthing hired the Natural History Museum for a party, with Tom Jones providing the entertainment, and, by all accounts, Reykjavik’s actual snow was augmented by a blizzard of the Colombian variety. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008 exposed Iceland’s debts which, at one point, were said to be around 850 per cent of GDP (compared with the US’s 350 per cent), and set off a chain reaction which resulted in the krona plummeting to almost half its value. By this stage Iceland’s banks were lending money to their own shareholders so that they could buy shares in . . . those very same Icelandic banks. I am no Paul Krugman, but even I can see that this was hardly a sustainable business model. The government didn’t have the money to cover its banks’ debts. It was forced to withdraw the krona from currency markets and accept loans totalling £4 billion from the IMF, and from other countries. Even the little Faroe Islands forked out £33 million, which must have been especially humiliating for the Icelanders. Interest rates peaked at 18 per cent. The stock market dropped 77 per cent; inflation hit 20 per cent; and the krona dropped 80 per cent. Depending who you listen to, the country’s total debt ended up somewhere between £13 billion and £63 billion, or, to put it another way, anything from £38,000 to £210,000 for each and every Icelander.

When there is a break in our relationship, he may bring consequences as a means to draw us back to himself. He sees when we: • Judge and criticize • Trust our money instead of him • Turn to our addiction to make ourselves feel better • Act out sexually • Withdraw from relationships • Respond with rage and

Others were behavioral. For instance: a potential terrorist was unlikely to withdraw money from an ATM on a Friday afternoon, during Muslim prayer services.

she was sitting in the drive-through of the Dairy Queen Bank & Trust withdrawing money to pay an anonymous blackmailer who might have murdered Steve Chasen, and keeping it all a tidy secret from her long-lost boyfriend who had no idea they had a history together. She thought her head might explode.

Even before the first Soviet tanks crossed into Afghanistan in 1979, a movement of Islamists had sprung up nationwide in opposition to the Communist state. They were, at first, city-bound intellectuals, university students and professors with limited countryside appeal. But under unrelenting Soviet brutality they began to forge alliances with rural tribal leaders and clerics. The resulting Islamist insurgents—the mujahedeen—became proxies in a Cold War battle, with the Soviet Union on one side and the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia on the other. As the Soviets propped up the Afghan government, the CIA and other intelligence agencies funneled millions of dollars in aid to the mujahedeen, along with crate after crate of weaponry. In the process, traditional hierarchies came radically undone. When the Communists killed hundreds of tribal leaders and landlords, young men of more humble backgrounds used CIA money and arms to form a new warrior elite in their place. In the West, we would call such men “warlords.” In Afghanistan they are usually labeled “commanders.” Whatever the term, they represented a phenomenon previously unknown in Afghan history. Now, each valley and district had its own mujahedeen commanders, all fighting to free the country from Soviet rule but ultimately subservient to the CIA’s guns and money. The war revolutionized the very core of rural culture. With Afghan schools destroyed, millions of boys were instead educated across the border in Pakistani madrassas, or religious seminaries, where they were fed an extreme, violence-laden version of Islam. Looking to keep the war fueled, Washington—where the prevailing ethos was to bleed the Russians until the last Afghan—financed textbooks for schoolchildren in refugee camps festooned with illustrations of Kalashnikovs, swords, and overturned tanks. One edition declared: Jihad is a kind of war that Muslims fight in the name of God to free Muslims.… If infidels invade, jihad is the obligation of every Muslim. An American text designed to teach children Farsi: Tey [is for] Tofang (rifle); Javed obtains rifles for the mujahedeen Jeem [is for] Jihad; Jihad is an obligation. My mom went to the jihad. The cult of martyrdom, the veneration of jihad, the casting of music and cinema as sinful—once heard only from the pulpits of a few zealots—now became the common vocabulary of resistance nationwide. The US-backed mujahedeen branded those supporting the Communist government, or even simply refusing to pick sides, as “infidels,” and justified the killing of civilians by labeling them apostates. They waged assassination campaigns against professors and civil servants, bombed movie theaters, and kidnapped humanitarian workers. They sabotaged basic infrastructure and even razed schools and clinics. With foreign backing, the Afghan resistance eventually proved too much for the Russians. The last Soviet troops withdrew in 1989, leaving a battered nation, a tottering government that was Communist in name only, and a countryside in the sway of the commanders. For three long years following the withdrawal, the CIA kept the weapons and money flowing to the mujahedeen, while working to block any peace deal between them and the Soviet-funded government. The CIA and Pakistan’s spy agency pushed the rebels to shell Afghan cities still under government control, including a major assault on the eastern city of Jalalabad that flattened whole neighborhoods. As long as Soviet patronage continued though, the government withstood the onslaught. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, however, Moscow and Washington agreed to cease all aid to their respective proxies. Within months, the Afghan government crumbled. The question of who would fill the vacuum, who would build a new state, has not been fully resolved to this day.

Designing financial products that share the commitment features of the microfinance contracts, without the interest that comes with them, could clearly be of great help to many people. A group of researchers teamed up with a bank that works with poor people in the Philippines to design such a product, a new kind of account that would be tied to each client’s own savings targets. This target could be either an amount (the client would commit not to withdraw the funds until the amount was reached) or a date (the client would commit to leave the money in the account until that date). The client chose the type of commitment and the specific target. However, once those targets were set, they were binding, and the bank would enforce them. The interest rate was no higher than on a regular account. These accounts were proposed to a randomly selected set of clients. Of the clients they approached, about one in four agreed to open such an account. Out of those takers, a little over two-thirds chose the date goal, and the remaining one-third, the amount goal. After a year, the balances in the savings accounts of those who were offered the account were on average 81 percent higher than those of a comparable group of people who were not offered the account, despite the fact that only one in four of the clients who had been offered the account actually signed on. And the effects were probably smaller than they could have been, because even though there was a commitment not to withdraw any money, there was no positive force pushing the client to actually save, and many of the accounts that were opened remained dormant. Yet most people preferred not to take up the offer of such an account. They were clearly worried about committing themselves to not withdrawing until the goal was reached. Dumas and Robinson ran into the same problem in Kenya—many people did not end up using that accounts they were offering, some of the because the withdrawal fees were too high and they did not want to have their money tied up in the account. This highlights an interesting paradox: There are ways to get around self-control problems, but to make use of them usually requires an initial act of self-control.

In order to retire with a 4% withdrawal rate, your retirement portfolio must be 25-times your annual pre-tax income needs.

Die, then!” This alarming counsel split the air. “Die if you must, Mukunda! Never believe that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment, He who has bestowed appetite, will inevitably see that His devotee is maintained. Do not imagine that rice sustains you nor that money or men support you. Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life breath? They are His instruments merely. Is it by any skill of yours that food digests in your stomach? Use the sword of your discrimination, Mukunda! Cut through the chains of agency and perceive the Single Cause!

That [isolation] which is now reigning everywhere, especially in our age, but it is not all concluded yet, its term has not come. For everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation. For all men in our age are separated into units, each seeks seclusion in his own hole, each withdraws from the others, hides himself, and hides what he has, and ends by pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself. He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now; and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence. For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people's help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish. Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man's true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the wholeness of humanity. But there must needs come a term to this horrible isolation, and everyone will all at once realize how unnaturally they have separated themselves one from another

The first goal should be to recover the original trading capital you have put in. You must get your original capital out as soon as you can. If you started with 1 lakh and you are down to 90,000 or 50,000, don’t pull out the principal. If you are up to 1.5 lakh, pull out 50,000. You will see your trading performance improve as soon as you have withdrawn your principal. After that, set a goal to withdraw 20% of your gains if your money doubles. Removing money regularly is similar to putting away savings from your salary.

You are also allowed to “Roth and Roll.” You can roll the balance of your traditional IRA into a Roth, again if your income level qualifies.* You need to pay tax on the amount converted, but from then on neither the earnings nor the withdrawals in retirement are taxed. Moreover, you are not required to take the money out at retirement, and contributions can continue to be made into your seventies and eighties if you wish. Thus, significant amounts can be accumulated tax free for future generations.

In a RECESSION or slow-down, this makes economic conditions worse. If governments, businesses and households all have too much debt, and all set about repaying their debts at the same time, it’s an economic disaster. That’s why David Cameron had to backtrack on a speech he was planning to make to the Tory party conference in 2011: ‘The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit-card and store-card bills.’ It was pointed out that this was a genius formula for making the recession worse, so he had, very embarrassingly, to withdraw the lines from his speech.

Benjamin Franklin provides us with an actual rather than a hypothetical case. When Franklin died in 1790, he left a gift of $5,000 to each of his two favorite cities, Boston and Philadelphia. He stipulated that the money was to be invested and could be paid out at two specific dates, the first 100 years and the second 200 years after the date of the gift. After 100 years, each city was allowed to withdraw $500,000 for public works projects. After 200 years, in 1991, they received the balance—which had compounded to approximately $20 million for each city. Franklin’s example teaches all of us, in a dramatic way, the power of compounding. As Franklin himself liked to describe the benefits of compounding, “Money makes money. And the money that money makes, makes money.

use the Schwab ATM card to withdraw money at any ATM nationwide. All ATM charges are automatically reimbursed at the end of the month. Generally, I use my Capital One 360 account as a receiver,

First, figure out when you and your spouse will be laid off or be too sick to work. Second, figure out when you will die. Third, understand that you need to save 7% of every dollar you earn. (Didn’t start doing that when you were 25, and you are 55 now? Just save 30% of every dollar.) Fourth, earn at least 3% above inflation on your investments, every year. (Easy. Just find the best funds for the lowest price and have them optimally allocated.) Fifth, do not withdraw any funds when you lose your job, have a health problem, get divorced, buy a house, or send a kid to college. Sixth, time your retirement account withdrawals so the last cent is spent the day you die.

Seldom do we pray seriously and thoughtfully for those we love as they deal with their besetting sins. I’m going to pick on husbands for a minute because most men don’t pray thoughtfully for their wives; they just whine or withdraw. When they do pray, they often simply want their own lives to be pain free. Men will work at making money, keeping the yard neat, or helping the kids in sports, but many don’t work at or think about things that last. For example, a husband will rarely ask God for his wife to become more like Jesus. Let’s say she is critical of him. When he tries to talk to her about it, she says, “I wouldn’t be so critical of you if you didn’t have so many problems.” By raising the issue, he just got more criticism, so his heart quietly shuts down. He just doesn’t care anymore. She is who she is. So he moves on with life and flips on the television.

That woman, the wife of the village policeman, is afraid you will find out how much she spends, so she withdraws until you have left. She is a secret eater of chocolate, which she buys from the housekeeping money her husband gives her. And then she takes cheap rancid ham and stale cheese and tells her husband it’s my fault. He ought to beat her.

His purchase of the Vincent [First Folio] signaled his breakthrough as a great collector. He had learned the price of hesitation and quibbling. He had overcome the psychological hurdle that all beginning collectors confront: spending big money. Some collectors do not obtain their finest pieces until the summit of their careers. Folger achieved many of his greatest triumphs at the dawn of his quest. This was his seventh First Folio (W 59, F 1). Some collectors lose great objects because they take too long to hit their stride. They lack the confidence to recognize opportunities or the will to act decisively, even when they could afford the piece. They posses the financial resources but not the will to deploy them. Great opportunities come too early in their careers and they do not act. They fail to realize that falling stars are rare, that planets rarely align. Henry learned these lessons early in the game. 140 [Note: First offered at £5,000, Folger's quibbling led the owner to withdraw the Folio. We offered later for £10,000, Folger bought it immediately.]

His purchase of the Vincent [First Folio] signaled his breakthrough as a great collector. He had learned the price of hesitation and quibbling. He had overcome the psychological hurdle that all beginning collectors confront: spending big money. Some collectors do not obtain their finest pieces until the summit of their careers. Folger achieved many of his greatest triumphs at the dawn of his quest. This was his seventh First Folio (W 59, F 1). Some collectors lose great objects because they take too long to hit their stride. They lack the confidence to recognize opportunities or the will to act decisively, even when they could afford the piece. They possess the financial resources but not the will to deploy them. Great opportunities come too early in their careers and they do not act. They fail to realize that falling stars are rare, that planets rarely align. Henry learned these lessons early in the game. 140 [Note: First offered at £5,000, Folger's quibbling led the owner to withdraw the Folio. When offered later for £10,000, Folger bought it immediately.]

According to Ostrom and Schlager’s taxonomy, these may include distinct rights of access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation.101 If we can capture these quasi-legal notions in a token, it becomes a meta-asset, a thing of value that is simultaneously a governance vehicle.

We must also cap ATM fees at $2.00. People should not have to pay a 10 percent fee for withdrawing $40 of their own money out of an ATM.

RETIREMENT PITFALL #5: Taking a Loan from Your 401(k) This is an enormous no-no at any time in your career, but it’s a particularly disastrous mistake if you’re within five years of your retirement. Money removed from your 401(k) is money that cannot grow (with compound interest!), even if you are able to pay it back relatively quickly. The lost time equals lost growth, which you cannot afford to waste. In addition, 401(k) loans are considered withdrawals—with the attendant 10 percent early-withdrawal penalty plus income taxes—if you lose or leave your job before paying it back. Add the fact that most 401(k) plans will not allow you to contribute money to the plan while you have an outstanding loan, and it’s clear that this kind of loan is going to be extremely costly for you. If you need a loan, it’s far better to explore taking a home equity loan or borrowing from your insufferable brother than taking money from your own future. Yes, the interest on 401(k) loans tends to be low, and you are paying that interest to yourself. But the potential costs and risks are far too high, especially for those who are in their final years of work.

...but first the period of human isolation must conclude.' 'What isolation?' I asked him. 'That which is now reigning everywhere, especially in our age, but it is not all concluded yet, its term has not come. For everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation. For all men in our age are separated into units, each seeks seclusion in his own hole, each withdraws from the others, hides himself, and hides what he has, and ends by pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself. He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now; and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence. For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people's help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish. Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man's true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity. But there must needs come a term to this horrible isolation, and everyone will at once realize how unnaturally they have separated themselves one from another. Such will be the spirit of the time, and they will be astonished that they sat in darkness for so long, and did not see the light...

America's legacy of oppression and dispossession of dark people is in large part met with the ethos of "We Shall Overcome," "Si Se Puede," and "We Gon' Be Alright." This is not to say that we have not resisted, rioted, rebelled, rightfully so and with righteous rage. It is these acts of rebellion that have allowed us to create a collective identity and, therefore, build schools, educate our children, use the church as a place of worship and community building, gather the best legal minds to argue for basic human rights, take to the streets as a demonstration of our commitment, and withdraw or withhold our money from companies and institutions that demean us and deny us. It is these acts that have allowed us to produce beautiful, visceral, and eloquent literature, photography, visual art, and films that explain and endure our suffering, soundscapes for all to enjoy (but which only those in the struggle can feel and heal from), body movements that express pain and joy simultaneously, food that can only be made from love, and a joy that cannot be replicated outside of the dark body. We have created in the void, defiant of the country's persistent efforts to killed and commodify us. Finding ways to matter.

Virtually all brokerage firms offer individual retirement accounts (IRAs). There are two main types: traditional and Roth. The main difference between them is tax treatment. Traditional IRAs give you a tax deduction now, and tax-deferred growth for the money in the account; you pay taxes only when you begin to withdraw money. Roth IRAs give you no tax deduction now, but all of the money in the account grows tax-free as long as you don’t take it out early (the after-tax money you put in you can still access penalty-free if you need to).

Traditional financial planning would say you need to accumulate 20 times your current income, or $5 million in critical mass, to generate $250,000 of pretax income (assuming a 5% withdrawal rate). But if you aren’t required to pay tax, and the actual income you need is $125,000 without taxes, you really need to accumulate only 20 times $125,000, or a total critical mass of just $2.5 million within this structure. That means you get to your goal 50% faster or you get twice the spendable income if you reach your original goal of critical mass in the same time.

Imagine a drug that can intoxicate us, can infuse us with energy, and can do so when taken by mouth. It doesn’t have to be injected, smoked, or snorted for us to experience its sublime and soothing effects. Imagine that it mixes well with virtually every food and particularly liquids, and that when given to infants it provokes a feeling of pleasure so profound and intense that its pursuit becomes a driving force throughout their lives. Overconsumption of this drug may have long-term side effects, but there are none in the short term—no staggering or dizziness, no slurring of speech, no passing out or drifting away, no heart palpitations or respiratory distress. When it is given to children, its effects may be only more extreme variations on the apparently natural emotional roller coaster of childhood, from the initial intoxication to the tantrums and whining of what may or may not be withdrawal a few hours later. More than anything, our imaginary drug makes children happy, at least for the period during which they’re consuming it. It calms their distress, eases their pain, focuses their attention, and then leaves them excited and full of joy until the dose wears off. The only downside is that children will come to expect another dose, perhaps to demand it, on a regular basis. How long would it be before parents took to using our imaginary drug to calm their children when necessary, to alleviate pain, to prevent outbursts of unhappiness, or to distract attention? And once the drug became identified with pleasure, how long before it was used to celebrate birthdays, a soccer game, good grades at school? How long before it became a way to communicate love and celebrate happiness? How long before no gathering of family and friends was complete without it, before major holidays and celebrations were defined in part by the use of this drug to assure pleasure? How long would it be before the underprivileged of the world would happily spend what little money they had on this drug rather than on nutritious meals for their families?

As Fidel Castro’s M–26–7 forces increased their attacks, the Cuban army was forced to withdraw into the larger towns for safety. This caused ever-increasing pressure on Batista. The United States government stopped supplying the Batista régime with weapons and ammunition. In 1958, in spite of an all-out attack and heavy aerial bombings upon Castro’s guerrilla forces, known as “Operation Verano,” the rebels continued advancing. At that time Batista’s Army had 10,000 soldiers surrounding the Sierra Maestra Mountains and Castro had 300 men under his command, many of them former Batista soldiers who joined the rebels after being appalled by the abuses that they were ordered to carry out. By closing off the major roads and rail lines, Castro put Batista’s forces at a severe disadvantage. On January 1, 1959, with his pockets stuffed with money and an airplane full of art, Presidente Fulgencio Batista flew the coop. Flying to the Dominican Republic before continuing to Portugal some months later, he left Anselmo Alliegro Mila to serve as Acting President. The next day he was relieved and Carlos Manuel Piedra, who had served as the senior member of the Supreme Court, was appointed Provisional President for a day. It was in accordance with the 1940 Cuban constitution, but his appointment was opposed by the new leader, Fidel Castro…. Piedra was 92 years old when he died in 1988.

As Fidel Castro’s M–26–7 forces increased their attacks, the Cuban army was forced to withdraw into the larger towns for safety. This caused ever-increasing pressure on Batista. The United States government stopped supplying the Batista régime with weapons and ammunition. In 1958, in spite of an all-out attack and heavy aerial bombings upon Castro’s guerrilla forces, known as “Operation Verano,” the rebels continued advancing. At that time Batista’s Army had 10,000 soldiers surrounding the Sierra Maestra Mountains and Castro had 300 men under his command, many of them former Batista soldiers who joined the rebels after being appalled by the abuses that they were ordered to carry out. By closing off the major roads and rail lines, Castro put Batista’s forces at a severe disadvantage. On January 1, 1959, with his pockets stuffed with money and an airplane full of art, Presidente Fulgencio Batista flew the coop. Flying to the Dominican Republic before continuing to Portugal some months later, he left Anselmo Alliegro Mila to serve as Acting President. The next day he was relieved and Carlos Manuel Piedra, who had served as the senior member of the Supreme Court, was appointed Provisional President for a day. It was in accordance with the 1940 Cuban constitution, but his appointment was opposed by the new leader, Fidel Castro.

however, the round trip was a very long one (fourteen months was in fact well below the average). It was also hazardous: of twenty-two ships that set sail in 1598, only a dozen returned safely. For these reasons, it made sense for merchants to pool their resources. By 1600 there were around six fledgling East India companies operating out of the major Dutch ports. However, in each case the entities had a limited term that was specified in advance – usually the expected duration of a voyage – after which the capital was repaid to investors.10 This business model could not suffice to build the permanent bases and fortifications that were clearly necessary if the Portuguese and their Spanish allies* were to be supplanted. Actuated as much by strategic calculations as by the profit motive, the Dutch States-General, the parliament of the United Provinces, therefore proposed to merge the existing companies into a single entity. The result was the United East India Company – the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie (United Dutch Chartered East India Company, or VOC for short), formally chartered in 1602 to enjoy a monopoly on all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.11 The structure of the VOC was novel in a number of respects. True, like its predecessors, it was supposed to last for a fixed period, in this case twenty-one years; indeed, Article 7 of its charter stated that investors would be entitled to withdraw their money at the end of just ten years, when the first general balance was drawn up. But the scale of the enterprise was unprecedented. Subscription to the Company’s capital was open to all residents of the United Provinces and the charter set no upper limit on how much might be raised. Merchants, artisans and even servants rushed to acquire shares; in Amsterdam alone there were 1,143 subscribers, only eighty of whom invested more than 10,000 guilders, and 445 of whom invested less than 1,000. The amount raised, 6.45 million guilders, made the VOC much the biggest corporation of the era. The capital of its English rival, the East India Company, founded two years earlier, was just £68,373 – around 820,000 guilders – shared between a mere 219 subscribers.12 Because the VOC was a government-sponsored enterprise, every effort was made to overcome the rivalry between the different provinces (and particularly between Holland, the richest province, and Zeeland). The capital of the Company was divided (albeit unequally) between six regional chambers (Amsterdam, Zeeland, Enkhuizen, Delft, Hoorn and Rotterdam). The seventy directors (bewindhebbers), who were each substantial investors, were also distributed between these chambers. One of their roles was to appoint seventeen people to act as the Heeren XVII – the Seventeen Lords – as a kind of company board. Although Amsterdam accounted for 57.4 per cent of the VOC’s total capital, it nominated only eight out of the Seventeen Lords.

MONTH ONE ACTION PLAN Open a new checking account that is free of monthly maintenance fees. Notify your employer to have your direct deposit sent to the new account. Same with any automatic payments or transfers you make from your checking account—notify everyone of the new account. Balance your checkbook each month; verify all your withdrawals and deposits, and keep track that every bill you pay is recorded as a debit on your account. Open a new savings or money market account that is FDIC insured and carries a high APY. Make it a goal to build a savings account over time that has a balance large enough to cover up to eight months of living expenses. Sign up for automatic deposits into your savings account. If you have more than $100,000 at any one institution, make sure you understand the rules for getting full insurance coverage.

It’s a common theme among the highly concentrated investors profiled in this book. Permanent capital—capital not subject to withdrawal or redemption—is an essential component for achieving high returns in concentrated portfolios because it offers the luxury of ignoring the short-term fluctuations of the market:65 Why would we want those artificial constraints? Lou had considerable periods in the dotcom bubble when the averages were outperforming Lou. It was years and he got well all at once. Nobody was saying to him, “How can you do this to us for three years running?” The money management business is not necessarily a good way to manage money if you are really trying to maximize your returns over 30 years.

Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can’t live alone, you were born a slave.

My life is not glamorous. I have no intention for it to be. I've seen enough real life TV series about the emotional price of "high end" shoes, the carving disappointment of documenting every cash withdrawal on lunch, dinner and beautified / colorized apparel, about the political correctness underwired in social media protesting instead of voting. Something about me feels more sympathy towards the guy who went for canned beer and cigarettes in the backyard at 2 pm rather than your 5 cents.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TAX SHELTER AND TAX DEFERMENT The first lesson I learned was simple: not every tax break is scuzzy. Leona Helmsley, also known as the “Queen of Mean,” may have been sentenced to sixteen years in prison for tax evasion (ah, sweet justice), but there’s a big difference between legal and illegal tax avoidance. When I first started out, I didn’t have nearly as many tax-avoidance strategies as the rich did, but there are a few available to anyone, and taking advantage of every opportunity is absolutely critical. Tax sheltering means putting your money someplace where taxes no longer apply. Think of taxes as gravity in The Matrix, or logic in the Transformers movies. Even if it technically exists, it doesn’t apply to you. For example, if you invest in an index ETF and it goes up, it’s not reported on your tax return. If you earn interest on that account, ditto. Once your money is inside a tax shelter, you never get taxed on it again. This is because the money that goes into a tax-sheltering account has already been taxed. Tax deferment, on the other hand, is the process of taking a chunk of your income and choosing not to pay income taxes on it that year. Here’s how it works: You contribute a portion of your income to a tax-deferred account. The amount you contribute reduces your taxable income for that year, and accountants would call this contribution “deductible.” So, if you made $50,000 one year, and you chose to defer $10,000, then that year you would only be taxed as if you earned $40,000. That $10,000 you deferred gets put into a special account where it can grow tax-free, but if you withdraw it, it will be added on to your taxable income and you’ll pay taxes on it then. This is because money going into tax deferral hasn’t been taxed yet. To recap . . . Tax Shelter Tax Deferral Contributions are . . . Not deductible Deductible Growth/interest/dividends are . . . Tax-free Tax-free Withdrawals are . . . Tax-free Taxed as income

A Roth can also be a backup emergency fund. Because your contributions are made with after-tax dollars, you are free to withdraw them (though not the earnings on them) at any age without incurring taxes or penalties.

Over the next few hours, depositors tried to withdraw another $8 billion. But the Reserve Fund couldn’t sell assets fast enough to come up with the money. The shadow bank run was hidden from the public,

Strangely, in the hedge fund business, if you’re down 30 percent or 40 percent your clients will withdraw all their money and you’ll be shut down in no time. However, when you’re down 90 percent, as the Hermitage Fund was in 1999, most clients said to themselves, “What the hell. Might as well hold on and ride it out to see if it recovers.

This all sounds pretty ominous, but you haven’t seen anything yet. You must add the “multiplier effect” of bank lending practices. Practically no one is aware that, when you make a deposit of $1,000 at your favorite bank, they can now lend out $10,000 as a result of your deposit. It is called the “fractional reserve lending system,” that is, they are creating money out of thin air. (My own description of what they are doing is the world’s largest con game). It is all predicated on the theory that “everyone is not going to withdraw their money at the same time.” For a complete treatise on what is going on in banking I suggest, no, I beg you to read The Case Against The Fed, by Murray Rothbard. You can get it at the Ludwig von Mises Institute located in Auburn, AL.

A one-year CD will typically charge an early withdrawal penalty of three months or so of interest. For a five-year CD, the penalty might be six to eight months interest. Every CD issuer has its own policy. Be sure you know the rules before you invest. A portfolio of CDs with different maturities can be a smart strategy to increase your overall yield, while reducing the chances you will need to make an early withdrawal. For instance you could invest equal amounts in five different CDs: one-year, two-year, three-year, four-year, and five-year. That way you have some money maturing every year. When the one-year CD matures, invest it in a new five-year. Your two-year CD now has just one more year to go, so it becomes your one-year CD. When it matures, invest that in a five-year CD too. Keep doing this and eventually you will have a portfolio of five-year CDs, with one maturing every year. That will pay you more interest than if you kept all of your money in a one-year CD that you had to reinvest annually. I think the CD ladder can be a terrific option for some of your cash, but if you are aiming for a two-year cash reserve, I would still keep at least six months of that in a simple savings account where

you will not owe any withdrawal penalties.

What most people don’t know is that they can use their IRAs to invest with you. And they don’t have to pay early withdrawal penalties to do so. Instead, they take advantage of the IRS tax code that allows them to “self-direct” their IRA investment. This means they can transfer their IRA accounts to a “self-directed IRA custodian” and then legally invest the money in almost anything they want:

In the case of Israel and Palestine, it can feel as though the situation is impossible and that the sides are unequal because Israel has more political power, nuclear weapons, and the support of the United States. You may be deceived by appearance. During the Vietnam War everyone saw that America was the big power and the Vietnamese were a tiny nation without weapons, technology, or the huge amount of money that the Americans had. But the Americans had to withdraw from Vietnam. We should not be too sure.

The top 1% of the world’s wealthy control more than 50% of all wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report. In the United States, the 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. The number of millionaires in the world has tripled in the decades since 2000. And the amount of the world’s wealth controlled by the bottom 50% of the global population? Under 3%. These inequalities are more than numbers. They are fuel for high emotions and mass social change. They have led to the rise of populist political movements and propelled a variety of unlikely candidates into power. The difference between the top 1% and all the rest gets our attention. So much for money. Let’s now consider something infinitely more valuable: happiness. Specifically, the happiness found in Bliss Brain. Here we also find huge inequalities. Historically, Bliss Brainers are a tiny percentage of the population. Few even attempt the journey to enlightenment, and of those who seek Nirvana, even fewer attain it. When a rare spiritual genius, such as Jesus or Buddha, reached that pinnacle, the event was so significant that it changed the entire course of world history. WITHDRAWING FROM EVERYDAY LIFE The lives of the great spiritual masters of history inspired others to follow their example. But like the saints, these aspirants could not reach enlightenment in the everyday world, with its demons and distractions. So for thousands of years, those committed to the spiritual path went to special places such as hermitages, wilderness retreats, monasteries, and convents. They exiled themselves from ordinary society in order to pursue nonordinary states of consciousness. They couldn’t achieve Bliss Brain amid the hubbub of society, so they turned their backs on it. The rest of society stayed in ordinary consciousness, driven by the desires and demons of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In my book Mind to Matter, I call this survival orientation “Caveman Brain.” It’s hard to find Bliss Brain when surrounded by Caveman Brain, and pulling yourself out of that environment and into a sacred space is usually a prerequisite for enlightenment. What percentage of the population undertook the journey? No census of enlightenment seekers is possible, but one proxy is the number entering religious seclusion. In the early 1300s, England had a monastic population of about 22,000, with another 10,000 in other religious occupations.

CHAPTER 4 THE ONE PERCENT The top 1% of the world’s wealthy control more than 50% of all wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report. In the United States, the 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. The number of millionaires in the world has tripled in the decades since 2000. And the amount of the world’s wealth controlled by the bottom 50% of the global population? Under 3%. These inequalities are more than numbers. They are fuel for high emotions and mass social change. They have led to the rise of populist political movements and propelled a variety of unlikely candidates into power. The difference between the top 1% and all the rest gets our attention. So much for money. Let’s now consider something infinitely more valuable: happiness. Specifically, the happiness found in Bliss Brain. Here we also find huge inequalities. Historically, Bliss Brainers are a tiny percentage of the population. Few even attempt the journey to enlightenment, and of those who seek Nirvana, even fewer attain it. When a rare spiritual genius, such as Jesus or Buddha, reached that pinnacle, the event was so significant that it changed the entire course of world history. WITHDRAWING FROM EVERYDAY LIFE The lives of the great spiritual masters of history inspired others to follow their example. But like the saints, these aspirants could not reach enlightenment in the everyday world, with its demons and distractions. So for thousands of years, those committed to the spiritual path went to special places such as hermitages, wilderness retreats, monasteries, and convents. They exiled themselves from ordinary society in order to pursue nonordinary states of consciousness. They couldn’t achieve Bliss Brain amid the hubbub of society, so they turned their backs on it. The rest of society stayed in ordinary consciousness, driven by the desires and demons of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In my book Mind to Matter, I call this survival orientation “Caveman Brain.” It’s hard to find Bliss Brain when surrounded by Caveman Brain, and pulling yourself out of that environment and into a sacred space is usually a prerequisite for enlightenment. What percentage of the population undertook the journey? No census of enlightenment seekers is possible, but one proxy is the number entering religious seclusion. In the early 1300s, England had a monastic population of about 22,000, with another 10,000 in other religious occupations.

As people accumulate more money, they become less dependent on public goods and, in turn, less interested in supporting them. If they get their way, through tax breaks and other means, personal fortunes grow while public goods are allowed to deteriorate. As public housing, public education, and public transportation become poorer, they become increasingly, then almost exclusively, used only by the poor themselves.[6] People then begin to denigrate the public sector altogether, as if it were rotten at the root and not something the rich had found it in their interest to destroy. The rich and the poor soon unite in their animosity toward public goods—the rich because they are made to pay for things they don’t need and the poor because what they need has become shabby and broken. Things collectively shared, especially if they are shared across class and racial divides, come to be seen as lesser. In America, a clear marker of poverty is one’s reliance on public services, and a clear marker of affluence is one’s degree of distance from them. Enough money brings “financial independence,” which tellingly does not signal independence from work but from the public sector. There was a time when Americans wished to be free of bosses. Now we wish to be free of bus drivers. We wish for the freedom to withdraw from the wider community and sequester ourselves in a more exclusive one, pulling further and further away from the poor until the world they inhabit becomes utterly unrecognizable to us.

Now, picture a bank that’s financing CDOs for a hedge fund through Repo transactions. Suppose the floor dropped-out from under the CDO market, like it did in 2007, and the bank issued a margin call to the hedge fund. Suppose the hedge fund told the bank, “We will give you your cash as soon as we sell some CDOs. Maybe next week.” That doesn’t work. But the Repo counterparty has an out. No need to wait. Once there is technically a default or bankruptcy, the bank can take over the hedge fund’s positions and liquidate them. Then they cross their fingers that they had taken enough margin to cover the losses on the forced sale! That brings up a good question. Why are there runs on banks and shadow banks? The question is easily answered when you look at what banks and shadow banks have in common. They lend long and borrow short. It’s the age-old business model flaw of the banking system. They are lending money long-term and borrowing money short-term. A bank writes a 30-year mortgage loan to a homeowner and borrows money from their depositors to cover the loan. Remember, the depositors can show up any day and withdraw their money. Unfortunately, this same bank business model flaw extends to the shadow banks. They also lend long and borrow short. Just like a bank, a REIT’s MBS portfolio might have an average weighted maturity of, say, seven years.

Capital withdrawals by investors can torpedo investment strategies of money managers at the worst possible time.

Other fintechs followed similar trajectories, growing slowly until an economy of scale led them to grow, very suddenly, into ubiquity. Because fintechs mostly focus on smaller dollar amounts than the big banks, scale matters. A wealth manager who only deals with high-net-worth individuals may consider everyone else “lobby trash,” but as wealth consolidates among fewer and fewer people, the wealth manager’s potential client base keeps shrinking. Meanwhile, the fintechs have earned the loyalty of all the “lobby trash.” When three hundred or three thousand individuals withdraw their savings from their bank and move their money into Betterment or Acorns or Chime, the amount is an insignificant percentage of a bank’s holdings; the bank doesn’t notice or especially care.

Here’s a remarkable insight: We can understand a child’s level of sturdiness or vulnerability by tracking what’s called allostasis, the process by which we maintain stability in our bodies. But you don’t have to remember that scientific word! The neuroscientist and researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett has another word for this continuous balancing of energy and resources: body budgeting. Just as a financial budget keeps track of money, she says, bodies track “resources like water, salt, and glucose as you gain and lose them.” Although we are not always aware of our body’s metabolic budget, everything we experience, including our feelings and actions, becomes deposits or withdrawals in our body budget. A hug, a good night’s sleep, playing with friends, and a healthy meal: All of these are deposits. Then there are withdrawals: things like forgetting to eat meals or drink enough fluids, being deprived of deep sleep, or being isolated or ignored.

All the while, traditional banks can take as long as a week and charge as much as $50 for an international money transfer; they can refuse service to businesses they disagree with or simply defraud clients, and governments can devalue local currencies with reckless printing of new money to finance spending, or they can ban foreign currency purchases and limit withdrawals.

What are your feelings from Bush to Obama? Besides being responsible for the death of half a million people, I feel like Bush dealt a huge economic and social blow to the USA, one from which we may never fully recover. He directly flushed 3 trillion dollars down the toilet on hopeless, pointlessly destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq …and they’re not even over! For years to come, we’ll be paying costs for all the injured veterans (over 50,000) and destabilizing three countries, because you have to look at the impact that the Afghan war has on Pakistan. Bush expanded the use of torture, and created a whole new layer of government bureaucracy (the “Department of Homeland Security”) to spy on Americans. He created Indefinite Detention (at Guantanamo and other US military bases) and expanded the use of executive-ordered assassinations using the new drone technology. On economic issues, his administration allowed corporations to run things and regulate themselves. The agency that was supposed to regulate oil drilling had lobbyist-paid prostitutes sleeping with employees while oil industry lobbyists basically ran the agency. Energy companies like Enron, and the country’s investment banks were deregulated at the end of the Clinton administration and Bush allowed them to run wild. Above all, he was incompetent and appointed some really stupid people to important positions at every level of government. Certainly, Obama has been involved in many of these same activities. A few he’s increased, such as the use of drone assassinations, but most of them he has at least tried to scale back. At the beginning of his first term, he tried to close the Guantanamo prison and have trials for many of the detainees in the United States but conservatives (including many Democrats) stirred up public resistance and blocked this from happening. He tried to get some kind of universal healthcare because over 50 million Americans don’t have health insurance. This is one of the leading causes of personal bankruptcies and foreclosures because someone gets sick in a family, loses their job, loses their health insurance (because American employers are source of most people’s healthcare) and they can’t pay their health bills or their mortgage. Or they use up all their money caring for a sick family member. So many people in the US wanted health insurance reform or single-payer, universal health care similar to what you have in the UK. Members of Obama’s own party (The Democrats) joined with Republicans to narrowly block “The public option” but they managed to pass a half-assed but not-unsubstantial reform of health insurance that would prevent insurers from denying you coverage when you’re sick or have a “preexisting condition.” The minute it was signed into law, Republicans sued in the courts (all the way to the supreme court) and fought, tooth and nail to block its implementation. Same thing with gun control, even as we’re one of the most violent industrial countries in the world. (Among industrial countries, our murder rate is second only to Russia). Obama has managed to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan over Republican opposition but, literally, everything he tries to do, they blast it in the media and fight it in Congress. So, while I have a lot of criticisms of Obama, he is many orders of magnitude less awful than Bush and many of the positive things he’s tried to do have been blocked. That said, the Democratic and Republican parties agree on more things than they disagree. Both signed off on the Afghan and Iraq wars. Both signed off on deregulation of banks, of derivatives, of mortgage regulations and of the energy and telecom business …and we’ve been living with the consequences ever since. I’m guessing it’s the same thing with Labor and Conservatives in the UK. Labor or Democrats will SAY they stand for certain “progressive” things but they end up supporting the same old crap... (2014 interview with iamhiphop)

All this unfettered taxation, of course, raises the question, “If these investments are 100% taxable, why have them at all?” The answer is liquidity. Generally speaking, it’s easy to get your hands on these investments, which means that they make for great emergency funds. Financial experts generally agree that we should have roughly six months’ worth of income in these accounts as a buffer against life’s unexpected emergencies. Having too little means that we can be forced to withdraw money from illiquid investments, incurring unwanted taxes or penalties. Having too much, on the other hand, means that we can be disproportionately affected by the rise of taxes over time. From a tax-efficiency perspective, therefore, investments in this bucket should be just the right amount: about six months’ worth of income.

Called by the fattoria committee, the unemployed braccianti arrive in force on the lands that the owners refuse to improve. In spite of the presence of the owners, the superintendents, or their agents, the workers carry out the work; they then demand their salary (pay ble to the legal investment fund). In the backwards strike, the workers work against the wishes of the boss, and their work increases the productivity of the soil. This is doubly paradoxical when compared to the conventional notion of the strike. Thus, at Empoli, between Florence and Sienna, 70,000 cubic meters of grading, ditches, and other work has been carried out by the "strikers" under the direction of the fattorie committees. The latter paid the workers directly, withdrawing 4% from the money deposited by them into the bank and representing the sale of farm products. in all the areas of Tuscany where the committees are active, they have organized the planting of vines, the work of drainage or irrigation, the repair of buildings, and whatever else might be required. They even established, in individual locations, nascent production cooperatives for clearing the land and improving uncultivated or poorly cultivated soil, which assumes their presence on these lands notwithstanding the will of the owner.

thought, I’m going to need money. I logged into our online banking to see the balances in our checking and savings, and guess what?” Josie was pretty sure she wasn’t expecting them to answer, although she had a feeling she already knew where this was going. It made her sick to her stomach. Tori looked at Noah and then at Josie. “There is one hundred seventy-two dollars in checking and fourteen dollars in savings.” Noah said, “How much did you think was in those accounts?” “Well, I know that two weeks ago when I checked the balances, there was over three thousand dollars in our checking account and ten thousand dollars in savings.” She handed Josie the pages. It took a moment for Josie to flip through them and figure out exactly what she was looking at, but she found the withdrawals. “He took out almost thirteen thousand dollars last week.” “Yes,” said Tori. She tapped against the pages, indicating for Josie to keep looking at the bank statements. “He also drained his retirement account. Tens of thousands of dollars. Gone. He didn’t even leave enough in there to pay the penalties!” Josie found that statement, her heart dropping when she saw that Elliott had taken an early withdrawal of nearly two hundred thousand dollars. She passed the pages to Noah, who studied them.

Future of Prepaid Instruments Merchants continue to have their closed loop wallets as an easy way for pushing refunds, a tactic for increasing customer stickiness. But with instant refund solutions, these wallets also may lose their charm. Only a few types of prepaid cards have some value: Gift Cards (because these are a lazy person’s gifting choice), Forex cards (Quintessential for overseas trips) and Specialised cards (Sodexo). But this status is changing with the growth of a particular sector – NBFC/LendingTech. As NBFC/LendingTech companies cannot issue credit cards so prepaid cards are used as instruments to lend the money (by doing just in time funding to the prepaid card). In Apr’21, RBI have issued new guidelines for prepaid cards/wallets: Balance limit is increased to Rs. 2,00,000 Interoperability among PPI instruments Cash withdrawal at ATM and POS PPI entities can set-up operations for NEFT/RTGS transfers With these new guidelines and boom in neo-banks & LendingTech companies, prepaid cards and wallets may get another shot at not just revival but a remarkable growth. Let’s wait and watch!

Kennedy also offended the Military-Intelligence complex. Amongs others for the reason that he decided to pull out of Vietnam.[81] He was against a continuation of Western colonialist domination of Vietnam and criticized the U.S. alliance with the French effort to retain its empire. During his presidency he opposed a massive commitment of U.S. forces to fight a war that he felt the Vietnamese had to fight primarily on their own. He consistently rejected recommendations to introduce U.S. ground forces. Shortly before his assassination he started withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam. At the time of his death about 16,000 U.S. troops were in Vietnam. U.S. policy in Vietnam changed within twenty-four hours of Kennedy’s death. Under President Johnson the U.S. involvement escalated and 543,000 soldiers (ground forces) were sent to Vietnam.[82] Kennedy wanted to establish a lasting peace in a world free of nuclear weapons. Amongst others he wanted to stop Israel developing its own nuclear bomb. He also was seeking for a peaceful coexistence with Russia and Cuba. Kennedy came up against the Federal Reserve Bank as well. He was the only president of the United States who tried to put an end to the power of the Federal Reserve. He refused to cooperate with the Federal Reserve Bank any longer. Four months prior to his death John Kennedy dared to challenge the Federal Reserve Bank. Kennedy wanted to have his own state money printed instead of prolonging the outstanding loans of compound interest issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On June 4, 1963, a little-known attempt was made to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Kennedy’s order gave the Treasury the power “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury”. This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation.

Julius waited stone-faced as the other centurions scattered to their centuries, eager to make sure their men were ready for a forced march, none of them wanting to suffer the embarrassment of causing the cohort any delay in their headlong charge to the west. The tribune watched them go for a moment, then turned back to the heavily built centurion with a grim smile. ‘So, Centurion, what, you are wondering, have you done to have your expected position as Uncle Sextus’s deputy usurped by your colleague Clodius?’ Julius shrugged, his heavyset face impassive. ‘The Badger’s a good man, Tribune, more than capable of leading the cohort down a road and deploying them to wipe out a few hundred bandits. I’ll admit I’m curious though. Was it something I’ve done?’ Scaurus smiled, putting a hand on the big man’s shoulder. ‘Yes, Julius, it was something you’ve done. It was every little bit of professionalism you’ve displayed since I took this cohort under my command, every order given and every enemy killed. In the absence of the first spear you’re my best individual officer, and I’ve got a job that needs doing here that I can’t entrust to anyone less than my best centurion. We’re forced to withdraw our force from Tungrorum to deal with this new threat, but there’s enough money being held in the headquarters’ safe room to attract every thief and gang leader in this whole city, what with the pay chests and the proceeds of the grain fraud. I’m leaving you here, Julius, you and your century, and depending on you to make sure that nobody gets their grubby fingers on that money. I want a double-strength guard on the vault, and the rest of your men, whether eating, resting or sleeping, no more than a dozen heartbeats away. You can also keep Centurion Corvus’s wife and the wounded safe from harm while you’re at it, and relieve me of the trouble of carting that jar of naphtha around. As of this moment you’re free to kill anyone and everyone you suspect to be a threat to the emperor’s gold, without hesitation or fear of any repercussion. If we return that gold to the throne we will be congratulated and possibly even rewarded, but if we lose it again, having exposed its original loss and recapture to the throne’s eyes, the outcome will be altogether darker for everyone concerned. Do we understand each other, Centurion?

I have no doubt that she is sincerely desirous of seeing all the evils of suffering humanity remedied, and that she thinks this might easily be done, if Government would only undertake it. But, alas! that poor unfortunate personage, like Figaro, knows not to whom to listen, nor where to turn. The hundred thousand mouths of the press and of the platform cry out all at once:-- "Organize labour and workmen. "Do away with egotism. "Repress insolence and the tyranny of capital. "Make experiments upon manure and eggs. "Cover the country with railways. "Irrigate the plains. "Plant the hills. "Make model farms. "Found social workshops. "Colonize Algeria. "Suckle children. "Instruct the youth. "Assist the aged. "Send the inhabitants of towns into the country. "Equalize the profits of all trades. "Lend money without interest to all who wish to borrow." "Emancipate Italy, Poland, and Hungary." "Rear and perfect the saddle-horse." "Encourage the arts, and provide us with musicians and dancers." "Restrict commerce, and at the same time create a merchant navy." "Discover truth, and put a grain of reason into our heads. The mission of Government is to enlighten, to develop, to extend, to fortify, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people." "Do have a little patience, gentlemen," says Government in a beseeching tone. "I will do what I can to satisfy you, but for this I must have resources. I have been preparing plans for five or six taxes, which are quite new, and not at all oppressive. You will see how willingly people will pay them." Then comes a great exclamation:--"No! indeed! where is the merit of doing a thing with resources? Why, it does not deserve the name of a Government! So far from loading us with fresh taxes, we would have you withdraw the old ones. You ought to suppress "The salt tax, "The tax on liquors, "The tax on letters, "Custom-house duties, "Patents." In

Heaven ain't some Swiss bank. You can't squirrel away money in some secret account up there and expect to make a withdrawal. You gotta do what you can before goin' into battle. That's the first rule of soldierin'.

The Congressmen and Senators themselves had seen to it that bribery was the only way of doing business with them. Frequently they would introduce bills so bothersome to business that they would be offered handsome sums to withdraw them. The money would be accepted, since obtaining it was the only point of the enterprise, and the bill would be dropped. This technique was known as ‘the Strike’. Others would call it extortion.

She sighed to herself, and longed to leave this place. It’d been four months now since everything came to its ugly conclusion. She opened the drawer to the sideboard beside her and stared down at the money she’d been withdrawing in lumps from her bank account over the last few months.

Never admit that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment, He who has bestowed appetite, will certainly see that His devotee is sustained! Do not imagine that rice maintains you, or that money or men support you! Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life-breath? They are His indirect instruments merely. Is it by any skill of yours that food digests in your stomach? Use the sword of your discrimination, Mukunda! Cut through the chains of agency and perceive the Single Cause!

CONFUSION 1: WHAT DOES YOUR CUSTOMER REALLY WANT? Your Customers aren’t just people; they’re very specific kinds of people. Let me share with you the six categories of Customers as seen from an E-Myth marketing perspective: (1) Tactile Customers; (2) Neutral Customers; (3) Withdrawal Customers; (4) Experimental Customers; (5) Transitional Customers; and (6) Traditional Customers. Your entire marketing strategy must be based on which types of Customers you are dealing with. Each of the six customer types buys products and services for very different, and identifiable, reasons. And these are: 1. Tactile Customers get their major gratification from interacting with other people. 2. Neutral Customers get their major gratification from interacting with inanimate objects (a computer, a car, information). 3. Withdrawal Customers get their major gratification from interacting with ideas (thoughts, concepts, stories). 4. Experimental Customers rationalize their buying decisions by perceiving that what they bought is new, revolutionary, and innovative. 5. Transitional Customers rationalize their buying decisions by perceiving that what they bought is dependable and reliable. 6. Traditional Customers rationalize their buying decisions by perceiving that what they bought is cost-effective, a good deal, and worth the money. In short: 1. If your Customer is Tactile, you have to emphasize the people of your business. 2. If your Customer is Neutral, you have to emphasize the technology of your business. 3. If your Customer is a Withdrawal Customer, you have to emphasize the idea of your business. 4. If your Customer is an Experimental Customer, you have to emphasize the uniqueness of your business. 5. If your Customer is Transitional, you have to emphasize the dependability of your business. 6. If your Customer is Traditional, you have to talk about the financial competitiveness of your business. Additionally, what your Customers want is determined by who they are. Who they are is regularly demonstrated by what they do. Think about the Customers with whom you do business. Ask yourself: In which of the categories would I place them? What do they do for a living? For example: If they are mechanical engineers, they are probably Neutral Customers. If they are cardiologists, they are probably Tactile. If they are software engineers, they are probably Experimental. If they are accountants, they are probably Traditional. But don’t take my word for it. Make your own analysis.

Some locations, such as Cyprus, were so important to the collection of sigint that UKUSA actually helped to shape the international politics of the region. In 1974, faced with a financial crisis, the British government formally decided to withdraw from its bases in Cyprus in order to save money. Within days, Washington told London that this decision was not acceptable and they must stay. The reason was simple. The sigint bases that allowed America to listen in to the Middle East were quite indispensable. In 2009, more than thirty years after the British government’s decision to withdraw from Cyprus, the sigint bases are still there, and have grown considerably in size.

There was speculation inside the Kremlin that Trump might be forced to withdraw from the presidential race, “ostensibly on grounds of his psychological state and unsuitability for high office.

Taking quick looks behind him on the trail, Lew Basnight was apt to see things that weren’t necessarily there. Mounted figure in a black duster and hat, always still, turned sidewise in the hard, sunlit distance, horse bent to the barren ground. No real beam of attention, if anything a withdrawal into its own lopsided star-shaped silhouette, as if that were all it had ever aspired to. It did not take long to convince himself that the presence behind him now, always just out of eyeball range, belonged to one and the same subject, the notorious dynamiter of the San Juans known as the Kieselguhr Kid. The Kid happened to be of prime interest to White City Investigations. Just around the time Lew was stepping off the train at the Union Station in Denver, and the troubles up in the Coeur d’Alene were starting to bleed over everywhere in the mining country, where already hardly a day passed without an unscheduled dynamite blast in it someplace, the philosophy among larger, city-based detective agencies like Pinkerton’s and Thiel’s began to change, being as they now found themselves with far too much work on their hands. On the theory that they could look at their unsolved cases the way a banker might at instruments of debt, they began selling off to less-established and accordingly hungrier outfits like White City their higher-risk tickets, including that of the long-sought Kieselguhr Kid. It was the only name anybody seemed to know him by, “Kieselguhr” being a kind of fine clay, used to soak up nitroglycerine and stabilize it into dynamite. The Kid’s family had supposedly come over as refugees from Germany shortly after the reaction of 1849, settling at first near San Antonio, which the Kid-to-be, having developed a restlessness for higher ground, soon left, and then after a spell in the Sangre de Cristos, so it went, heading west again, the San Juans his dream, though not for the silver-mine money, nor the trouble he could get into, both of those, he was old enough by then to appreciate, easy enough to come by. No, it was for something else. Different tellers of the tale had different thoughts on what. “Don’t carry pistols, don’t own a shotgun nor a rifle—no, his trade-mark, what you’ll find him packing in those tooled holsters, is always these twin sticks of dynamite, with a dozen more—” “Couple dozen, in big bandoliers across his chest.” “Easy fellow to recognize, then.” “You’d think so, but no two eyewitnesses have ever agreed. It’s like all that blasting rattles it loose from everybody’s memory.” “But say, couldn’t even a slow hand just gun him before he could get a fuse lit?” “Wouldn’t bet on it. Got this clever wind-proof kind of striker rig on to each holster, like a safety match, so all’s he has to do’s draw, and the ‘sucker’s all lit and ready to throw.” “Fast fuses, too. Some boys down the Uncompahgre found out about that just last August, nothin left to bury but spurs and belt buckles. Even old Butch Cassidy and them’ll begin to coo like a barn full of pigeons whenever the Kid’s in the county.” Of course, nobody ever’d been sure about who was in Butch Cassidy’s gang either. No shortage of legendary deeds up here, but eyewitnesses could never swear beyond a doubt who in each case, exactly, had done which, and, more than fear of retaliation—it was as if physical appearance actually shifted, causing not only aliases to be inconsistently assigned but identity itself to change. Did something, something essential, happen to human personality above a certain removal from sea level? Many quoted Dr. Lombroso’s observation about how lowland folks tended to be placid and law-abiding while mountain country bred revolutionaries and outlaws. That was over in Italy, of course. Theorizers about the recently discovered subconscious mind, reluctant to leave out any variable that might seem helpful, couldn’t avoid the altitude, and the barometric pressure that went with it. This was spirit, after all.

In a letter written to the play's director, Peter Wood, on 30th March 1958, just before the start of rehearsals, Pinter rightly refused to add extra lines explaining or justifying Stanley's motives in withdrawing from the world into a dingy seaside boarding-house: 'Stanley cannot perceive his only valid justification - which is he is what he is - therefore he certainly can never be articulate about it.' But Pinter came much closer than he usually does to offering an explanation of the finished work: We've agreed: the hierarchy, the Establishment, the arbiters, the socio- religious monsters arrive to affect censure and alteration upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility (that word again) towards himself and others. (What is your opinion, by the way, of the act of suicide?) He does possess, however, for my money, a certain fibre - he fights for his life. It doesn't last long, this fight. His core being a quagmire of delusion, his mind a tenuous fuse box, he collapses under the weight of their accusation - an accusation compounded of the shit- stained strictures of centuries of 'tradition'. This gets us right to the heart of the matter. It is not simply a play about a pathetic victim brainwashed into social conformity. It is a play about the need to resist, with the utmost vigour, dead ideas and the inherited weight of the past. And if you examine the text, you notice how Pinter has toughened up the original image of the man in the Eastbourne digs with 'nowhere to go'. Pinter's Stanley Webber - a palpably Jewish name, incidentally - is a man who shores up his precarious sense of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power-play. His treatment of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing: he's an ersatz, scarpegrace Oedipus to her boardinghouse Jocasta. But once she makes the fateful, mood-changing revelation - 'I've got to get things in for the two gentlemen' - he's as dangerous as a cornered animal. He affects a wanton grandeur with his talk of a European concert tour. He projects his own fear on to Meg by terrorising her with stories of nameless men coming to abduct her in a van. In his first solo encounter with McCann, he tries to win him over by appealing to a shared past (Maidenhead, Fuller's tea shop, Boots library) and a borrowed patriotism ('I know Ireland very well. I've many friends there. I love that country and I admire and trust its people... I think their policemen are wonderful'). At the start of the interrogation he resists Goldberg's injunction to sit down and at the end of it he knees him in the stomach. And in the panic of the party, he attempts to strangle Meg and rape Lulu. These are hardly the actions of a supine victim. Even though Stanley is finally carried off shaven, besuited, white-collared and ostensibly tamed, the spirit of resistance is never finally quelled. When asked how he regards the prospect of being able to 'make or break' in the integrated outer world, he does not stay limply silent, but produces the most terrifying noises.

Bankers, not just rouge bankers but all bankers, even the best, the most honourable and the most honest, do things which would land the rest of us in jail. Near my house in France is a large grain silo. After the harvest, farmers deposit grain in it. The silo gives them a certificate for every tonne of grain that they deposit. They can withdraw that amount of grain whenever they want by presenting that certificate. If the silo owner issued more certificates than the grain he kept in the silo, he would go to jail. But that is effectively what bankers do. They keep as reserves only a fraction of the money deposited with them, which is why we call the system the fractional reserve banking system.