Interesting hypothetical situation grassguitarcarrots.

Scenario 1 of course, 'da man's point of view has it that should you just plain quit (like giving up a nasty, destructuve habit) paying your credit card bill, bad things will happen. It is interesting to me that some of the potential "bad things" that might happen are not unlike some of the things that might happen should you, for instance, just plain give up another bad and destructive habit - voluntary compliance with the federally sanctioned and approved extortion that has an annual due date of April 14th. Behind the scenes, some of the same players involved in the criminal syndicate fronted by the agency most of us know as the IRS are the very same players involved in credit and banking. Although they share a common play book it is amazing how rare it is for any two people to enter the realm of bad things happening to them and come out the other end having similar notes to share for the experiences they each endured in between. One generally knows they are entering this realm when the series of "demand letters" first begins appearing in the mail. In this era of hi-tech asset monitoring, these letters often ensue automatically, generated by the computer BEAST that also sits behind the scenes carefully monitoring the occurance of regular transactions such as Payment Received.... or not. This is where the rubber really begins to meet the road for Joe or Joesephine citizen as they offially enter the highway to the realm of bad things.


Scenario 2 I read about in an article on a web site a few years ago. Off the top of my head I do not remember exactly where I read it. As these things go (reading stuff on a web site) I cannot vouch that the situation as decribed actually happened, but in reading the article in full I came away from the experience with the general feeling that many of the points discussed and explained had the ring of legitimacy to them as I understand the principles involved. Even though I found the article just a few years back, it told a story from several years earlier, late 80s or early 90s if I recall correctly. This will be important to remember at the close of this second scenario.

The basic story was premised on the situation of our current money system being constituted of currency (FRNs IE> Federal Reserve Notes IE> what most people recognize as "1, 5, 10, 20 dollar bills, etc) that is not backed by anything of substance, but instead is backed by fiat (IE> because somebody really important declared it so) coupled with the general expectation that the economy will continue to be productive. It is worth pointing out that what most of us know as "money" these days is actually a slang and/or incorrect use of the term, but since most everyone calls it money and not too many people complain, people generally are okay with this. The fiat nature of our currency also relates to the situation where money, especially when it comes to credit cards and bank loans, literally is created out of thin air. When you go to the bank and take out a loan, it literally is a matter of POOF!, through the magic of a bookmaking entry in a bank's computer system, you immediately have money in an account. Where did it come from? Well, basically it came from the computer entry, or if you got a hard copy of the transaction, it came from black ink stamped on some sort of paper. This is a far cry from the days when the bank actually was required to maintain a reserve of gold (substance of value) to cover the amount of credit they were giving out. Yeah, ask a banker today and they'll tell you that they still need to maintain a reserve of cash, but this cash is literally green ink on fancy white paper IE> present-day bank reserves are reserves of nothing, nothing of substance that is backed by fiat and the expectation that or economy will continue to be productive. What would happen to this currency should the enconomy crash? Compared to the manipulated crash of 1929, at least the people back then more commonly had their own stash of gold.....until fdr made it illegal to have and mandated people turn over their gold to the government/bank. Today, your average person does not have any kind of gold saftey net stuffed under their mattress. More likely today the only thing to be found under the mattress is some stains, crumbs and perhaps an old issue of playboy.

These are simplied but nonetheless accurate fundamentals of how our currency and banking system works these days, essentially a modern form of the ancient Babylonian system. There are a lot more basic fundamentals to learn and understand, but that will have to be for some other day. In any case, back to this story, it told of a person who sort of woke up one day and decided to quit paying their credit card bill. This person did not do this as a complete whim. They had studied and learned the basics and fundamentals of how the present currency/credit/banking system is designed. In preparation for entering the realm of "bad thigns", they also studied and learned some of the basics and fundamentals of law that they were likely to endure as they progressed through the realm.

Long story short, the person, who represented themselves in court *, was able, through their understanding and knowledge of all the pertinent laws, to convince the court and jury that the credit card balance they quit making payments on was based upon nothing IE> money (credit) created out of thin air, so how could they possibly be punished/jailed for failing to make payments on nothing?.....case closed, happy ending for them, not so happy for the court and their banker friends.

* - for such a case as involves banking, credit cards, debts, etc, this person was very smart to have represented themselves in court. Once one understands just some of the basics of how the modern court system works, they then understand that even though there are some very nice and friendly lawyers out there, and these nice friendly lawyers may be able to provide you a bit of good legal advice and service for a fee, when it comes down to it, laywers who are members of the BAR are ultimately an officer of the court and as such their ultimate service is to protect the interests of the court EVEN WHEN this is contray to the interests of their fee-paying client. REMEMBER THIS! EDIT: as an afterthought, when it comes to court, one is most likely to get top-quality help from a lawyer when the party they are doing legal battle against is not in league with the government. For instance, citizen versus citizen, you stand a decent chance getting good-quality help from a lawyer. But when it's citizen versus ANY derivative of Federal U.S. Government, chances are good you won't get a sniff of justice and your rights get trampled on in the process. Citizen versus Credit Card Company (or bank, or DoJ, or IRS, or insurance company, or drug company etc) is equivalent to citizen versus Federal U.S. Government. Occasionally you may find the people being thrown a bone and they appear (in the short term) to win a landmark case against a big corporation (like the fast-food coffee incident), but these apparent short-term victories for the people are generally undone by the agenda over the longer view, which ends up being the hidden reason why the people were thrown the bone in the first place.


Back to the important thing to remember from the first part of scenario 2. The above story was alleged to have happened roughly 15-20 years ago. The reason why this is important to remember is that 15-20 years ago, compared to the present era, one stood a somewhat reasonable chance of getting justice in court. I say this with somewhat of a grain of salt, our court system has been evolving towards tyranny for many decades, it's been rotten for many years. But compared to today, 15-20 years ago it was not nearly (yet) so bad. Today, I suspect there is much less chance scenario 2 could happen. This is really what our system of justice has evolved into - chance. The main reaoson why I say this is that even when one knows exactly how to represent themselves in court, even when one understands laws and how to make their case based on laws as they currently exist, the system has gotten so corrupt that, even when a person makes a perfectly sound and legal case in court, even when they know how to safely navigate all the booby traps our court system has become littered with, if their position is ultimately against the interests of the court (which by and large is the same interests of the bankers, and government, et. al), they (the court) will just blatantly steam role over you and decide the case in their favor. Plain and simple. There are many many examples of such case law to be read about on the web, and they are happening more frequently these days. Judges creating their own law "from the bench" as they see fit, judges ignorring laws as currently written when it serves their purpose, judges prohibiting the presentation of legitimate evidence and or witnesses when such does not serve their ultimate interest, judges and courts trampling on due process (essentially an old and nostalgic notion these days) as and when it suits their interests.

It may go without saying but I'll say it anyway, I do not see neither of the above scenarios as something to delve into casually, but that's just my conservative opinion. We each must do what we think and feel we must do, and be prepared to endure/battle the consequences.