rachel2w1w: Making Money Scams

This year, more than 600 taxi drivers were implicated in a giant taxi scam in which drivers overcharged passengers more than $1.1 million by flipping switches on their meters that kicked in higher rates. In the wake of the scandal, the Taxi and Limousine Company scrambled to portray the incident as a series of isolated incidents and mistakes by a select number of drivers. But according to one of those taxi scammers, these were no Lee Harvey Oswalds: it really was all a giant evil conspiracy!

According to driver Joseph Kastner, a group of drivers would meet together at cabby conferences in garages around the city and plot their nefarious schemes. "I met a series of drivers who decided to rob the public. They were actually having meetings at my old garage," Kastner, 49, told the TLC during a Sept. 30 administrative court hearing. Kastner is one of those accused drivers; he is charged with allegedly cheated 3,925 passengers out of $7,756, the sixth highest amount for an individual driver. Kastner claims that he wanted to become a whistleblower, alleging that the scams were much bigger than let on previously, and that he had stuff on the TLC as well, but no one took his offer: "I tried to tell them over and over again at the hearing. They didn't listen to a word I said. They just don't want to hear it," he told the Post.

So is Kastner trying to escape his fate by alleging a citywide conspiracy, making up stories to look better, or is there really an underground network of thieving taxi drivers plotting to steal unwitting customer's money? TLC obviously didn't take his claims seriously, but the Post sides with Kastner, saying that other cabbies and industry insiders confirm his story, and bad hacks pull other stunts such as charging drivers to put on the heat, pressing the "extra" button on tolls and bridges, and posing as livery drivers at airports and charging more than double the flat fee of $45 to Manhattan. Whether or not the conspiracy is as widespread as Kastner would have you believe, the best thing you can do is consult the Passenger Bill of Rights, and always be vigilant of extra charges of any kind.

I’d feel better about ignoring the plight of this nation’s 20M unemployed and underemployed people if it wasn’t for the fact that consumable commodities have gotten so high. I don’t care how much money Donald Trump has but the World Record for corn eating is 46 ears in a sitting so, no matter how hard The Donald tries, he can’t consume enough corn to make up for the millions of people who have to cut back this holiday season. While 3D TVs and IPhones and Mercedes only need a few million customers to have a good year – it doesn’t make sense for broadly consumable commodities to assume the bottom 80% can continue to buy at these prices.

Of course, don't go getting too bearish now. We'll be taking our bearish money and running this morning as we have a $45Bn money drop scheduled by the Fed next week and, while I don't think it's going to be enough to turn the tide if the Dollar keeps rising, I don't think it's worth risking much to fight it.

As usual, we will get back to cool, liquid cash and simply ride the waves, looking for the next opportunity to dip our toes into. The EU needs to get their act together but if you take a look at this video of UK's Godfrey Bloom calling Germany's Martin Schultz "an undemocratic fascist" and getting ejected from the meeting - you'll see that they aren't all that close on coming to a general agreement on how to deal with their little PIIGies. Here's another "must see" video, an impassioned speech by UK's Nigel Farage condemning the entire proceeding!

Man I love European Politics! You might think that the EU spiraling out of control and a possible war in Korea would be great for gold but then you wouldn't be a PSW Member because we know it's ALL about the dollar and money flying out of the Euro doesn't go to gold, it goes to Dollars and Yen and a rising dollar is NOT good for gold and we'll get a nice move down there as the dollar moves back up. Our re-entry point on gold is $1,150 so we have about $200 to go, which is 14%, which is about Dollar 88 so that will be fun to watch if the Dollar gets a real squeeze but, at the moment, we are only counting on the Dollar hitting 82 as that's the 200 dma but woe unto the commodity pushers if it breaks over that mark so stabilizing the Euro will be critical this weekend for commodity bulls. Hopefully Bloom and Schultz will work out their differences by then (end extreme sarcasm font).

Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero must be a PSW Member as he is taking my advice this morning and going directly after bond speculators, "ABSOLUTELY" ruling out an EU rescue of Spain, saying: "I should warn those investors who are short-selling Spain that they are going to be wrong and will go against their own interests." Meanwhile, Portugal has denied a report that several EU countries as well as the ECB are pressuring the country to apply for a bailout. Separately, Portugal's finance minister says the EU cannot force his government to accept a bailout. The spread between Portuguese debt and German debt now stands at 444 basis points - that's 4.44% MORE for Portugal to borrow money than Germany.

The EU Commission is now (8am) suggesting doubling the size of its $588Bn bailout and that is boosting EU markets, who were down close to 2% going into lunch and are now recovering slightly on that news. That's how quickly things can change around here. Did I mention how much I like cash lately. Those dollars are getting more valuable every day!

So it will be take the money and run this morning, especially if our Dollar fails to hold 80.50, which would be disappointing on such bad news from Europe. We'll be watching copper between $3.70 and $3.75 to give us a directional signal as well as oil at the $82.50 line, which would be tragic if it fails. Natural gas has been our lagging commodity of choice and they are finally getting themselves together with a pop to $4.44 as LNG is once again being touted as driving future demand. It's all nonsense, of course - all LNG does is enable a two year supply of natural gas to be shoved into frozen storage but TBoone and his industry buddies have suckered enough governments and investors to buy into this nonsense that it has taken on a life of it's own and we are just going with the flow. CHK is the way to play Nat Gas long-term and they are quite a deal at $22.

Of course it's Black Friday and it's all about Retail Sales today and expectations are through the roof for a FANTASTIC holiday shopping season because all the people on TV (average salary $200,000) and all the analysts (average salary $250,000) and all the Retail CEOs (average salary $2.5M) and all the shopping mall owners (hanging on by a thread and will say anything it takes) say it's going to be a great holiday because everything is fine and all of their neighbors who haven't lost their homes yet are planning to buy something. Isn't that special?

Members, please take the time to participate in the 2010 PSW Holiday Shopping Survey. Last year we were able to accurately predict what turned out to be disappointing retail sales from our observations - we have a lot of very sharp people with a wealth of experience to draw on and I urge you to read last year's post and comments to get an idea of what we're looking for.

Have a great weekend,

- Phil

20% discount to try Phil's Stock World here.

bench craft company scam

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Making Money Scams

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