Debt-Sequitur: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 352-360

 May continues with a non-sequitur about the American government’s debt in general but toward “Arab Countries” in particular. Conservatives love bringing up the debt when they are not in charge of the government; conservative conspiracy theorists love bringing it up all of the time. They do this because it is boring, but it seems important. Only economists like talking and hearing about national debt, business people do—but in specific venues, everyone else just likes to complain about it without understanding any of it. Debt ceiling conversations are a solid example of this.

It sounds like a legit argument—we should stop spending money we don’t have. However, that’s not the debt ceiling, the debt ceiling is about paying money that’s already been spent. People think that not raising the debt ceiling is the same as not buying that new television, when instead, it’s more like no longer paying your utility bill. You already used the electricity, now you have to pay for it.

That’s all I’ll say about this because I’ve already spent more time on it than May. He moves on to recapping his story so far. He now tells us that he stopped his businesses in England in 1978 and then “I was terminated from being an individual with whom anyone could conduct business in England, as a result of the warped and crippled mind of a banker and his stooge.”

This is the first we’ve heard this story. He left England because of Police harassment in that little town that he won’t mention. May is all over the place here and I’m going to skip the next two pages to pick up on page 355 where we finally, finally, finally get to his point. It is disappointingly some anti-Federal Reserve conspiracy theory. We were warned about this in the only contribution that Cooper made to this chapter, but after 20 pages of May’s rambling, I guess I hoped the point would be different.

Here is May’s scam…I mean assertion. He has all this money, I guess, and he wants to set up another economy within the US. Since part of his holding company was owned by the US government (which is the first we’re hearing about this) this means that it is an independent agent of the US under Title 18 USC Section 6. This section of the law merely defines “agent” with respect to the government. If the government owned part of May’s holding company, then it could be an agent of the government. It also could not be if the ownership is non-consequential. The government has contracts with Moog Manufacturing, but Moog is not an agent of the government even though it has contracts with it. The government dumped all kinds of money into the banks during the 2008 crisis but the banks were not government agents.

May seems to think that because he invested some money and the government also invested some money that the government owes him a bunch of money. Let me repeat what he’s trying to do—scam a bunch of people. He’s attempting set up a “reconomy” using the profits from his investments in Oklahoma through a bank in Minnesota, issued through checks from a third bank; and he’s claiming that the US Government owes him money in return. None of this is verifiable of course, and it’s interesting that his plot requires three different states. I think this is to make it harder to check, but if he’s making a claim that he owns a banking company that holds investments across the mid/Northwest of the US, that’s interstate commerce.

This is important because he gets arrested for the issuance of fraudulent checks from the Bank of Lloyd, which I think he meant to type the “Bank of Boyd” which was the one in Minnesota. Maybe, it’s hard to tell if he mistyped or that there is another “bank” he’s talking about. Either way, he’s got interstate fraud on his hands. For someone so versed in the law, I’m surprised when he says, “I was given no extradition hearing but was held in Georgia for my removal to Minnesota for arraignment.”

Yeah, because you didn’t defraud Minnesota, you attempted to defraud the US government; and that’s a federal crime there is no extradition. They’ll move you to the circuit you committed the crime in but this isn’t like breaking a Georgia law and moving to Florida to hide out.

The rest of this is merely some sovereign citizen argument that includes a technical reading of the words of the law rather than the spirit. It’s more like six Rabbis arguing over how many paces you can walk before you are “outside” in the Talmud, but at least in the Talmud there’s a dialogue present. May has put himself in it though. He’s explained this overly convoluted business that he has, then he issued checks based on one of these banks (or two if Lloyd and Boyd are not the same thing), and tried to use them. Now he’s attempting to defend himself by making the claim that as a British citizen he’s owed the full protection of the US Constitution.

Ultimately his point is that the government’s economic system is fraudulent and his business venture was to operate in competition with the Federal Reserve. How this was going to be accomplished is not explained.

I’ll have to make amends somehow to you readers, because here is a brief summary of the last 20 pages: May committed a crime and is now saying the entire court is out of order and he should not only be freed but also paid. It’s all bullshit. He tries to impugn Carter for a crime that he committed while Reagan was president. It’s all so convoluted. The only question that remains for me, is how this letter which is addressed to Senators “Thurmon” (I assume he means Strom Thurmond), Graham (Lindsay?), Helms (Jesse), and Representatives Crane and Hefner; came into Cooper’s hands.

That’s it for his chapter. Cooper offers no commentary or no post-script. We are not told why May is anything other than a conman who tried to create a fake bank in the midwest. All we know is that in 1992 his appeal was denied.