Due diligence is a term familiar to anyone thoughtfully involved in the Stock Market. In a nutshell, it is carefully examining the company one considers buying stocks in. How deeply one delves into that company depends on how diligent one is willing to be.
Of course, “due diligence” should be done anytime one is thinking about giving something of value to someone in exchange for a p roduct o r s ervice. I t’s i mportant to protect one’s assets and make sure that value received is equal to value promised.
The only thing more amazing than the obfuscation and deluding that some vendors go through to sell a product is the gullibility of the buyer to easily accept the vendor’s assessment of its worth.
When the seller states his “widget” is a $400 value, due diligence demands an independent appraisal. When the seller says, “But wait!! Act now and you can have it for just three easy payments of only $49.99!”, due diligence smells a scam.
When the seller adds, “Act now and we’ll include this ‘doodad’ for free; we’ll even pay shipping!” it shouldn’t require anything more than common sense to realize the seller “ain’t” losing any money on this reduced offer. He’s still making a profit on something originally declared a “$400” value.
The seller may brag, “It’s clinically tested,” but results of those tests are never offered.
It seems to help if a beauty queen or celebrity is the spokesperson, although they’re 1) being paid cash for that endorsement and 2) probably have no real knowledge of its worth and effectiveness!
It’s hard to do due diligence on a wrinkle remover or pain reliever without making the purchase and trying it oneself.
One sales pitch I found fairly easy to investigate was centered around the Buffalo $50 gold piece.
“Centered around” because most of the advertisement is about the history and purity of the Buffalo $50 gold piece. Its design was taken from the 1913 Indian/Buffalo nickel by James Earle Fraser. On the obverse side is an Indian head facing right with the lettering “LIBERTY, W, [the year minted].”; The reverse side is a buffalo facing left with the lettering “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, E PLURIBIS UNUM, IN GOD WE TRUST, $50, 1OZ. .9999 FINE GOLD”.
What is easy to miss in this advertisement is that this “widget,” dubbed a “Tribute Proof,” is “clad” in gold. That’s mentioned only twice, once with the acknowledgement that it is “’clad’ in 14 milligrams of gold.” Beyond that, there is no effort to distinguish this “Tribute Proof” from an actual Buffalo gold coin.
Fourteen milligrams are 0.00049378th o f a n o unce. B efore the stock market crashed after Trump’s tariffs, gold was hovering around $3,200 an ounce (the actual cost of a real 1oz. $50 Buffalo gold coin). T hat b rought t he v alue o f gold in this “investment” to about $1.58.
The asking price is $9.95, not a bad profit, even if the slug its “clad” onto cost another $1.50.
For my due diligence, the signature sign of a scam is offered: “There’s a strict limit of five per order”!
Like the seller wouldn’t sell the whole lot at once …?
Of course, we’re free to waste our money on any bauble that catches our eye. However, some of the deals we may be drawn into affect more than our own finances.
Our vote is not in exchange for a “widget,” but for an individual to whom we are willing to entrust our future and the future of our children.
The last few weeks illustrate just how far decisions made by our government can reach.
Trump’s announcement of trade tariffs on virtually every country in the world sent the markets tumbling so fast that Trump’s least informed acolytes started the week thinking our economy, even with inflation still rising, was “booming.” Economists, not just the ivory-towered ones Trump loathes because they contradict him, had warned for weeks that tariffs would spark a costly and dangerous trade war.
Ronald Reagan, perhaps the most respected Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower, had said of tariffs, “Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies, they are our allies. We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world all while cynically waving the American flag.”
Trump, when asked about the ensuing stock crash, asked, “What’s going to happen with the market? I can’t tell you.”!
(Not knowing what’s going on is Donald Trump’s stock answer to questions he doesn’t want to answer.)
Who are we going to believe, Ronald Reagan, who coolly and diplomatically ushered the peaceful end of Russian domination of eastern Europe, or Donald Trump, who suggested injections of bleach might be used against COVID; who expresses his desire to incorporate an unwilling Canada into the U.S.; who threatens to annex Greenland from another ally, Denmark; who surrounds himself with an incompetent staff that, like children who find the key to a liquor cabinet, revel in their access to a classified military action; who connives to abandon Ukraine to the same Russia Reagan strove to contain (Russia was not included in Trump’s tariffs); and seeks to force his will, illegally, on and against American citizens, in direct opposition to our Constitution, enacting unlawful decrees and personal fiats then ignoring judicial rulings against his actions?
How did so many voters not do their due diligence before the last election?
It was so easy to anticipate this outcome.
