Trust

Once upon a time…

When money was still worth something.

The times when money was covered by gold. If you had money, you could change it into gold at the bank. The total value of all money in a nation equalled the value of all the gold in said nation. At least, that was the idea.

The total amount of money was limited. Money was rare.

In modern times, we have money glut. Gold fever for governments, gamblers, finance sharks and soldiers of fortune with silvery-grey ties.

Money is not created by producing new things of value, but by opening a credit line. You can pay back later, by taking up new loans.

Debts will create money!?!

We are up to our ears in money. The backing, the thing that guarantees its value, is our trust.

Everybody needs money, but who needs trust? Madoff, Lehmann Brothers and the likes, frauds.

Beware of trust preachers, they only preach for their own advantage.

My friend Harvey says:

My dear Dowd,

In former times, the Deutsche Bank slogan was:

Trust is the beginning of everything.

In particular, trust is the first step of any brainwashing.

As in the people’s wisdom: trust is blind.

If you put blind trust in someone,

You should be more than a little certain.

Or else not trust.

We should be strict about replacing trust by confidence.

What confidence do I have in someone?

What confidence do the Greeks have in their prime minister?

What confidence do the Germans have in their Federal Chancellor?

Exactly!

Dowd, remove trust from your vocabulary,

Replace it by confidence.

Then you will never again fall for Madoff and his type.

Besides, in those golden times,

Which you probably glorify so much because you are so old,

The currencies were always only covered by gold to a small percentage.

The brainwash term camouflaging it was: gold coverage.

It sounded like there was a nugget with the exact value of one hundred cents attached to each dollar bill.

I thank you, Harvey, because you lead us onto the right path.

Trust is the consequence of brainwashing. Confidence is problematic. It is based on information, but we have to trust the information. Otherwise confidence would be impossible. Which gets us right back to brainwashing.

Now all that remains is distrust.

I wonder why I have so many friends???

(Elwood P. Dowd).
(Translated by EG)