Fodder fun.

Sometimes in life, it's best to shutup and lie low. Except if you are a local O.L.C.C. agent, apparently.

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Calling a Ponzi scheme a Ponzi scheme. I ran into these kinds of operations a lot in my early years in sports cards. It doesn't matter that these operators were so stupid they thought they could pull it off -- they were buying with customer funds, and not delivering. Try to compete against that in the short run. I would make legitimate offers for collections, only to be outbid by fly-by-nights who had no hope of ever paying. (Consignment....probably made it legal, if not ethical.) Guys would break cases, sell the easy cards enough to buy more cases, break them up and sell the easy cards, and on and on.

It never did get much better. Totally unsupervised by the card companies, who apparently had no ability (or concern) for who was running a legit business and who was just scamming.

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Juniper Ridge got "favorable bids." Part of me says, good for you. Part of me says it's not a bad thing to plan for decades down the road.

But the bigger part of me wants to shout: The only reason Juniper Ridge got such favorable bids is because they're the only idiots still building!!!

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Speaking of Ponzi schemes. The thread running through a lot of these cases is intent. These people didn't have the 'intent' to run a Ponzi scheme, just as people who get hooked into pyramid schemes often don't know what they're getting into.

"Sawyers to Consider Settlement in Trust Suit." Todays Bulletin.

Gee, that's good of them.

Here's the killer quote to me, from Tami Sawyer:

"This has been such a mess," she said. "We don't understand what we're being sued for...Right now, it's hard to make this decision (about the settlement) because we don't have a clue. We don't understand any of it."

I totally believe her. The cry of a petulant child, who had just enough drive and energy to take from others, but no inner willingness to share.

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"Gaga for Gadgets" Real men go camping with a Swiss army knife and two matches...