Last year, we tried to ease your busy season blues with cute, mind-numbing videos every Wednesday in a feature we called Busy Season Zen. We're getting an early start on it this year even though your agony hasn't quite started because all of us could use a distraction right about now. Feel free to bookmark this and return to it later.
In case you haven't heard, DC got a little bit of snow yesterday. Safe to say, Giant shelves are missing all their milk, bread, and chicken breast in the Washington Metro, all for a couple inches. Don't ask me what's up with the chicken, that's just what they do when the weather is about to go bad.
For one Washington resident, the snow was a total blast. You'll note 16-month-old panda cub Bao Bao shows better coordination in the white stuff than most Washington drivers do out on the road, but I digress.
We'll be back next week with more like this and if you need a fix sooner, check the Busy Season Zen archive.
But what we’d really like to see him have a conversation with Barry Minkow about how that Barry thinks the Congressman’s report on Goldline International is unmitigated bullshit:
Friend of GC, Tracy Coenen participated in the Minkow’s investigation and she presents the findings over at Fraud Files Blog. Here’s a sample:
• Allegation: Weiner criticizes Goldline because of complaints on the website Ripoff Report lodged by consumers who say Goldline representatives improperly hold themselves out as investment advisors.
• What Weiner didn’t tell you: Ripoff Report says (in response to the consumer complaints) that you can feel completely confident doing business with Goldline. Weiner gave us only half of the story in his report.
Allegation: Goldline grossly overcharges for its products
What Weiner didn’t tell you: Our sampling of coins listed in the Weiner report showed that Goldline’s prices were very comparable to those of six competitors. He also forgot to mention that companies are free to set whatever prices they like for their products.
Allegation: Goldline says they’ll buy back your gold and silver, but doesn’t “guarantee” that
What Weiner didn’t tell you: It is against the law for Goldline to offer a buyback guarantee. If they offered such a guarantee, they would be in violation of securities laws because their salespeople are not licensed broker dealers.
Regardless of how you feel about Glenn Beck, gold coins, or Anthony Weiner’s Fox News-esque ability for interrupting, it kinda sorta sounds like the Congressman’s investigators don’t know a non-fraud when they see one. Besides, we’ll take the word of a convicted-felon-turned-fraud-buster over any report that comes out of Congress. Especially in an election year.
A message left with Congressman Weiner’s spokesperson was not immediately returned.
