Dear Reader, I Need Your Money (Or We Are All Going to Perish)by
Bill Barnwell Hello friends. I’m going to cut right to the chase. I’m in some trouble. Things are looking very bad for me and I’m pretty much broke. The only way I’m going to make it out of this is if you send me a lot of your money. No, this isn’t one of those silly email forwards. This isn’t some sob story about me being a dying foreign official promising great wealth if you do me a favor. This is very real and I very badly need your money. Let me explain. I was doing real well a few years ago. Money was pouring in with my business. I wanted to do well for me, my family, and my employees. I just wanted to move forward and give us all a better life. So I took some risks. I mean, that’s what successful businessmen do, don’t they? They take risks! OK, so maybe they weren’t the smartest risks. Maybe in retrospect they made little economic sense. But hey, what’s done is done. It doesn’t change the fact that I really need your money. I started giving out large sums of cash to a lot of my friends who needed money of their own. They promised they would pay me back, even though they’ve never paid back a lot of other friends who gave them money. Their track record was spotty to say the least, but I’m all about forgiveness, and hey, I was going to make a lot of money back on these loans for me and my people. And you know what; forget about me, I felt real good about the fact that I was helping people who wouldn’t have otherwise got the money from other people who had a big stick up themselves and were all stingy and stuff. Yeah, there were some naysayers warning me that things were getting out of control and that I shouldn’t just give money that kept food on the table for my family to these friends of mine. I don’t remember everything they said because they were pretty much just cranks and conspiracy theorists. I pretty much just blocked them out. They weren’t very mainstream or with the "in" crowd. Anyway, yeah that money was to keep my household and business up and running, but I thought we’d all be better off once I gave my money to friends who had spotty work and payment histories and other irresponsible habits. But I really thought my friends had changed. How can I really be blamed for trying to help people out? So, yeah, I made some mistakes. I lost some money. But then some other friends of mine who were investing in my business just started pulling out like crazy and putting their money into stupid things like gold. Now I’m left with hardly anything. Here’s the dilemma though guys: my bills are all coming due. I have house payments, car payments, insurance payments, and last year I bought a boat and put a few vacations and other fun toys that I put on my credit card. Heck, I don’t even have money to pay my remaining employees because I’ve maxed out my cash advances on my credit cards. I didn’t think I had anything to worry about because I thought my money was going to come in. And why shouldn’t it have? I have very smart friends with business and finance PhD’s who told me nothing was wrong. I have other friends who write for big name magazines who told me there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. Heck, even a bunch of powerful people in government were cheering me on. How could I have known any better? Look dear readers, if you don’t send me your money, think of all the people who are going to be hurt. My family is going to suffer. I won’t be able to pay my remaining employees. Other people won’t want to do business with me and they will lose out on income opportunities of their own. A lot of people are going to be hurt if you don’t send me your money. You aren’t that selfish, are you? There’s one more thing I didn’t mention. I have a lot of other friends right now who are going through the same thing as me. They need your money to. You need to prop us up and empower us to survive. You need us. If we fail and go under, who is going to take our places? The cranks? The nutjobs? Those weirdos who tried to scare us with all that doom and gloom stuff before this problem happened? Yeah, right. Like you’d want to listen to those guys and do business with them. What’s the alternative? Accepting the fact that some innocent people will get hurt because of our bad actions? A couple years of pain while we readjust our perspectives? You and I both know we can’t afford that. Only the problem will be much, much more severe than that, my friends.
Oh, wait, hold on. A congressman friend of mine just called. He said if you don’t give us your money they will take it by force through taxes. Or he said they will just call up some of our other friends who will just make more money out of thin air and then your grandkids can pay for it. Either way we will get what we want, so don’t make it harder than it has to be. Do the right thing, guys. Send me and my friends lots and lots of your money. Life as we know it hangs in the balance. October 1, 2008 Bill Barnwell [send him mail] is a pastor and freelance writer from Michigan. He holds both a Master of Ministry degree and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies degree from Bethel College in Mishawaka, Indiana. Prior to entering the ministry he studied Political Science and Social Science at Michigan State University and Wayne State University and was actively involved in local and state campaigns and consulting. Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
|
If
you don’t come through from us, life as we know it will cease to
exist. Your children and your children’s children will return to
living in caves and society will become a violent and chaotic mess.
Everything you hold dear will be destroyed if you don’t give us
your money. So please, please, please, do the right thing and give
us lots of your money and I promise we will fix all this and make
it OK. You can trust me.