According to The Washington Post (reprinted at The Hour, linked by Drudge). This is, we're told, "the first time a president's name appears on an IRS disbursement."
ADDED: The sentence quoted in the headline is poorly written. "The decision to have the paper checks bear Trump's name" was suddenly announced on Tuesday. It was not "in the works for weeks." The paper checks were "in the works for weeks," and this new decision caused delay. This is the kind of writing mistake that happens when you try to crush a lot of information into one sentence.
ALSO: Is it so odd that a leader would put his name on the money? It made me think of the Biblical story where Jesus figured out how to answer an attempted gotcha question from his antagonists:
All three synoptic gospels state that hostile questioners tried to trap Jesus into taking an explicit and dangerous stand on whether Jews should or should not pay taxes to the Roman authorities. The accounts in Matthew 22:15–22 and Mark 12:13–17 say that the questioners were Pharisees and Herodians, while Luke 20:20–26 says only that they were "spies" sent by "teachers of the law and the chief priests".The day will never come when Trump antagonists will marvel at one of his great deflections of a gotcha question and give up on trying to trap him and go away. We're just hours away from the next ridiculous press conference. I'm not really comparing Trump to Jesus. But Jesus was saying the money comes from the emperor, because — look — the emperor has his face on it. Jesus was talking about the obligation to give the money back to where it came from if the demand is made.
They anticipated that Jesus would oppose the tax, as their purpose was "to hand him over to the power and authority of the governor".[Luke 20:20] The governor was Pilate, and he was the man responsible for the collecting of taxes in Roman Judea. Initially the questioners flattered Jesus by praising his integrity, impartiality, and devotion to truth. Then they asked him whether or not it is right for Jews to pay the taxes demanded by Caesar. In the Gospel of Mark[12:15] the additional, provocative question is asked, "Should we pay or shouldn't we?"
Jesus first called them hypocrites, and then asked one of them to produce a Roman coin that would be suitable for paying Caesar's tax. One of them showed him a Roman coin, and he asked them whose head and inscription were on it. They answered, "Caesar's," and he responded: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's".
The questioners were impressed. Matthew 22:22 states that they "marvelled" (ἐθαύμασαν); unable to trap him any further, and being satisfied with the answer, they went away.
So if Trump's name is on the check, then the idea is impressed upon us that he let us have it and he can take it back. So be sure to cash the check. That rids the money of the name. It's not like coins, kept as coins until it's time to spend them, and always — in Jesus's view — reminding you that they could be grabbed back by the man whose face you see right there.
Writing this update, I thought of a question that had never occurred to me before: When did people first have bank accounts? Was Jesus speaking in a context where people kept all their money in coin form?
Posts
114 comments:
Fake News. Most people will get ACH deposits.
If Hillary did the same thing, not news.
So Joe was correct about Trump's signature delaying the physical check production. Wow. First time for everything. That’s gonna weaken the argument that Nancy is most responsible for delaying the checks. This was either a dumb move or one of those sneaky genius things. Maybe Black Americans will appreciate Trump's name in a check.
This is kind of a weird notion, but won't those checks become collector items if they are never cashed? There could be a huge savings to the treasury of lots of people don't cash their check. A minuscule amount for sure. Plus, these paper checks go to people that don't have bank accounts to accept direct deposits. So the people that need the money the most.
We got our deposit, $2400 sometime last night.
Direct deposit, Lying Stream Media. No signatures there.
If you're not in the system, they have a website to register for DD and give your bank info.
Still it is amazing to me that Joe got anything correct in his crazy rambling.
I still start the day thanking God that Hillary will never be president.
And do register. No disease-ridden paper and no trips to the bank.
The House “oversight committee” is now siding with WHO against the President. Speaking of dumb moves that will bury the check story....
Micke MJB Wolf- yeah it seems like something can't be right with the story if Biden knew Trump's signature was going to be on the checks, but Trump didn't.
Obama's fingerprints were all over the IRS targeting of Conservatives, though.
Yesterday’s presser was disappointing.
I only watch to see Trump berate the fake news reporters.
Not a single beat down!
Big fucking deal. BFD
My friends call me Mike, MayBee. Family calls me MJB. Pick one.
""The team, working from home, is now racing to implement a programming change that two senior IRS officials said will probably lead to a delay "
Interesting how the sentence fragment quoted above where some unnamed IRS guys say this will "probably lead to a delay" becomes "this new decision caused delay" just 3 paragraphs later.
Which is it? Might there be a delay, or is there already a delay? Seems sloppy.
This is the kind of writing mistake that happens when you try to spin a Washington Post article that's just looking for a way to try to bash Trump.
Question: Does the Fake News realize how much Real America hates it?
In other words, the career middle managers delayed telling the programmers long enough to cause a problem, hoping to undermine the political leadership.
Coulda been worse- they could be waiting for the gold leaf and for the big block TRUMP lettering.
@David Begley
"Question: Does the Fake News realize how much Real America hates it?"
Absolutely. They hate us right back, which is why they keep peddling in lies and covering for China.
I want investigations when this is over. 40 years they've been acting as a 5th column in American cultural and political life and I want to see hangings in the square.
Meanwhile, out in the real world:
"Harvard Announces Salary And Hiring Freezes, Discretionary Spending Reductions, Potential Deferral Of Capital Projects, And Leadership Salary Cuts."
Clearly, another "marginal business," as we've been told.
Pray tell, how many Harvard students and how many Harvard faculty have suffered any complications from the Wuhan virus?
If it takes weeks to change a signature image on a check, your IT team is incompetent.
>>I want investigations when this is over. 40 years they've been acting as a 5th column in American cultural and political life and I want to see hangings in the square.
That will never happen. Like the Russia investigation with all of it's lies, nobody will ever be prosecuted. I doubt anyone will even lose their job.
If it would make any of those who object to the precise form in which their check arrives take feel better, please send them to me because we're not getting one.
" Plus, these paper checks go to people that don't have bank accounts to accept direct deposits. So the people that need the money the most."
What's worse is that those poor people don't have photo IDs so they can't cash those checks at all, at least not if they are democrats. In fact, this might be a good opportunity to do a sanity check on how many people don't have photo IDs by counting the number of uncashed checks returned to the treasury.
Harvard's endowment fund is valued at $40 billion.
Ann said ... ""The decision to have the paper checks bear Trump's name" was suddenly announced on Tuesday. It was not "in the works for weeks."
I think the decision HAS been in the works for weeks. It was first announced the SAME DAY as the CARE Act passed , more than 2 weeks ago. If anyone at the IRS information team (sic!) didn't know this was happening, they were being willfully ignorant.
Althouse is reporting on a story from the WaPo. How is anyone being gaslit by Althouse?
If anything, it points to how untrue this story must be. It can't take weeks to put a signature on checks that have to be printed up, can it?
I want an $8 million check, like that guy in Indiana. I'll put a MAGA sticker on it myself.
BTW I received my "check" via ACH last night. Didn't say anything about Trump on it.
Also, what DanTheMan said: if you're a contestant on the IRS IT Apprentice show, and it takes you 2 weeks to add a Trump signature to the memo line of a check, YOU'RE FIRED!
"Harvard's endowment fund is valued at $40 billion.”
But they had plans for that money! Dreams!
The WaPo article also took pains to point out that the IRS has “steadfastly avoided politics” since Richard Nixon.
Lois Lerner and her IRS cronies dropped down the memory hole.
Another BTW, back when we used to receive Homestead Rebate checks in NJ they always were signed by the Governor.
"Harvard's endowment fund is valued at $40 billion."
Whatever it is now, it's a lot less than it was. Therefore, it can't support all the activities it did until recently. Therefore, even Harvard has to cut.
And this is before parents start objecting to paying Harvard prices for online-only education. If Harvard remains shut down and suffers, another whole sector will suffer. Might that add to prog pressure for reopening?
Got mine this morning, but I should have not filed yet this year - I would have gotten $500 more. A child turned 17 last year. If you filed 2019, they take those numbers. If not, 2018.
Cash For Cluckers checks were signed by Obama. Or should have been.
And remember those shovel ready highway jobs that were part of the stimulus package? IIRC those big road signs had Obama's name on them.
It's worth somewhere south of $40 billion today. It should be worth about twice that but they have grossly underperformed the S&P and their Ivy peer group ever since they fired Meyer and hired the chicks from the diversity committee.
Mike (MJB Wolf): My friends call me Mike, MayBee. Family calls me MJB. Pick one.
From a recent episode of "Better Call Saul," and a line I'm waiting for an opportunity to use (after his former boss asked the title character if he should call him "Jimmy" or "Saul"):
"My friends still call me Jimmy. You can, too."
News: Trump’s name will be in the checks
Fake news: Putting Trump’s name on the checks will cause a delay. This is from NBC News:
The Washington Post, which first reported the story, said the process of adding Trump's name to the checks could slow their delivery by days.
The Treasury Department official disputed that and said there would not be any delays.
"Economic Impact Payment checks are scheduled to go out on time and exactly as planned — there is absolutely no delay whatsoever," a Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement. "In fact, we expect the first checks to be in the mail early next week which is well in advance of when the first checks went out in 2008 and well in advance of initial estimates."
Jersey Fled said... BTW I received my "check" via ACH last night. Didn't say anything about Trump on it.
Thanks.
I just checked my bank account and discovered that I received the "Trump check" via ACH. My wife checked hers and found the same.
My (life long Democrat) wife initially believed the story about the "Trump check". WaPo has no shame.
That doesnt explain why they fired their wait staff.
Jeff W and me. I filed super early the wrong year.
On a modern payroll system, 15 years old or newer, you would click a button that would take you to an explorer window to select a new image file for the signature. On an antiquated system it may take a programmer 5 minutes to update the code. Either change should be made in a development environment and tested, migrated to a sandbox environment and tested, and once ready migrated to production. This could take a few hours if you did it off the regular migration schedule.
https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/economic-impact-payments
I don't get a check, but if I did, they could put Adolph Hitler's ass on it for all I care, as long as I can cash it.
Big Mike has the real new/fake news distinction down.
I guess the real story--that the President's name is going on these checks, and maybe even that this is happening at his insistence--doesn't do enough to chum the waters, so we'll claim it's causing delays.
BTW, in the pantheon of passing panics over the past several weeks (masks, ventilators, hospital beds, mass graves, yada yada), wasn't there one a week or so ago where it was going to be impossible for Treasury to get these payments out without killer delays (weeks and months)? I'm pretty sure there was. And now we learn that 80 million payments have already gone out via ACH. That's about one-fourth of the entire U.S. population (children and lunatics included).
A never-ending stream of bullshit.
If you use your phone to photograph the check, and deposit remotely, you can save the physical check, so there may be millions of these “collectors’ items” out there soon.
This is the kind of writing mistake that happens when you try to crush a lot of information into one sentence.
Thus is the kind of writing mistake that never happens to prominent Democrats because it is caught by the secondary editors at the DNC.
The delay is because they're also sending everyone an iPod preloaded with Trump's speeches.
When I worked as a pressman on a four color web offset press, we could change 8 plates in about five minutes.
We were not government workers, and not unionized, maybe that's the difference.
the presence of Trump's name on the checks reeks of partisanship in a corner of the government that touches all Americans and has, since the Nixon era, steadfastly steered clear of politics.
Conveniently forgetting what was done to Tea Party groups by Obama and his minions.
Wait until they see Trumps face on all newly issued US currency.
Blogger Menahem Globus said...
On a modern payroll system, 15 years old or newer, you would click a button that would take you to an explorer window to select a new image file for the signature. On an antiquated system it may take a programmer 5 minutes to update the code. Either change should be made in a development environment and tested, migrated to a sandbox environment and tested, and once ready migrated to production. This could take a few hours if you did it off the regular migration schedule.
4/15/20, 8:25 AM
These are government programmers: none of this applies.
(I hired a government programmer, once. They have no ability to function in the real world).
I want investigations when this is over. 40 years they've been acting as a 5th column in American cultural and political life and I want to see hangings in the square.
At best you will get shootings in the street, possibly stabbings. Who lives in this fantasy/nightmare world where people and cops stand by and let you lynch (bad) folks?
"I want investigations when this is over. 40 years they've been acting as a 5th column in American cultural and political life and I want to see hangings in the square."
Because nothing says America like hangings in the square.
The 1880's called, they'd like their exaggerated tropes back.
I thinks it’s a nice payback for the way the IRS targeted conservative trump organizations.
I would expect them to stomp their feet a little bit.
Trumper's call for lynching reporters... it's the Christian way
If you use your phone to photograph the check, and deposit remotely, you can save the physical check, so there may be millions of these “collectors’ items” out there soon.
You are right of course. But I was playing off the notion that the poor don't have bank accounts, that why they are required to get a paper check. No ACH, because no bank account.
I had an awakening 45 years ago, when a friend of mine was dating a bar owner in downtown Cedar Rapids. At the time there were two Oats Millers in CR National Oats, and Quaker Oats.
Anyway...that bar cashed over $150,000 in payroll checks every Friday night. Those workers did not have any bank account. I had a bank account since I was 15. These adults did not. I was gob smacked.
Twice. One that people didn't have a bank account. Two, and much bigger. There are thousands of subsets of reality that I never knew existed. That knowledge made the way I looked people change forever. Not that there is anything wrong with anything, but that normal is relative.
Lynching? I'd think that tarring, feathering, and running out of town would be sufficient. That's certainly an American tradition.
Auto sales dropped 25.6%, while clothing store sales collapsed, sliding 50.5%, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Restaurants and bars reported a nearly 27% fall in revenue.
I'm so sad for the people in my Facebook feed who consider $1200 a windfall. They have no idea what is about to hit them.
iowan2 said ... " I had a bank account since I was 15. These adults did not. I was gob smacked."
Same thing happened here when we finally made direct deposit mandatory, and found out there were employees who had to go sign up for their first checking account. At the other end of the spectrum, I was surprised to learn that many employees have a virtual "checking account" in name only, with no branches, cash options, or in fact, checks -- all transactions are carried out through a phone and debit card.
"This is the kind of writing mistake that happens when..."
nothing is too trivial to show Orange Man bad.
"Economic Impact Payment checks are scheduled to go out on time and exactly as planned — there is absolutely no delay whatsoever," a Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement. "In fact, we expect the first checks to be in the mail early next week which is well in advance of when the first checks went out in 2008 and well in advance of initial estimates."
thanks. As usual another lie about Trump from the Fake news.
oh it's apocalyptically bad, gdp contracted 5.4 percent, the idiot Spanish broadcasters were asking some recipient, what they were going to do with the check,
"Trumper's call for lynching reporters... it's the Christian way"
Trump haters lie about Trump....its the Christian way.
Jewish trumpers like Mark Levin support Trump.
Its the Jewish way.
Atheist Trumpers like Scott Adams support Trump.
its the atheist way.
Sales tax is the largest source of state funding for the state budget, accounting for 57 percent of all tax collections.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/we-must-count-the-deaths-from-shutdowns-as-well-as-from-coronavirus/
they'll start that countdown in may, around the time Pelosi gets back from her pedicure,
oh it's apocalyptically bad, gdp contracted 5.4 percent, the idiot Spanish broadcasters were asking some recipient, what they were going to do with the check
My husband is in a Facebook group for Rolex fans. There was a post this morning asking if anyone was going to put their check toward a new watch. Mr. Pants couldn't help but point out that if you fall under the income cap and are receiving a stimulus check, you have no business owning luxury jewelry.
How are we going to feed such people if the shit really hits the fan? Remember the savings rate in this country? That half of people can't put their hands on $400? And many many Americans have houses full of cheap crap that they bought when they got their hands on a few extra bucks but no ability to weather a financial storm?
I think the generally intelligent and successful people at Althouse sometimes forget that there is a vast underclass in this country who are very, very fragile and there is not enough money to keep them afloat. $1200 is NOTHING.
are people this stupid, rhetorical, flatlining the economy, based on dubious models, and even more dubiously sourced social distancing protocols,
Put Trump on the $20 instead of Harriet Tubman. Have the refunds be in the form of certified mail containing a fistful of $20s.
Pants: "Auto sales dropped 25.6%, while clothing store sales collapsed, sliding 50.5%, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Restaurants and bars reported a nearly 27% fall in revenue."
More "marginal businesses," as we've been told on this very blog. Time to weed out the weaklings.
Pants: "there is a vast underclass in this country who are very, very fragile"
Well, what's a little suffering for a couple of million underclassers and their underclass kids if we can save just one life of a sick obese 85-year-old New Yorker? I mean, you are not that callous, are you?
Upcoming story on MSNBC (because I'm psychic): "Trump plans to erect 60 foot TRUMP logo on White House roof".
"a looming Thursday deadline"
C'mon man, it's the government. Deadlines aren't even a thing there.
Eh, for a family of 4, $3400 can keep the budget going for another month. Hopefully, the lockdown will be eased by next month and we can begin to recover.
I get a big kick out of Trump's signature......and the crayon he uses to sign his name.
I'm guessing he's hoping that some folks will keep the check as a souvenir!!
A 2nd delay is planned to add the unnecessary Vote For to his name.
All those who hate Trump should refuse to cash those checks and destroy them. I'll probably use mine to build another AR15 or AR10.
Besides, the signature will be printed by machine. Get a grip, people.
The bank's online site says that owing to huge volume, consider doing your banking online.
There's no Trump deposit in my account, but the feds withdrew both my 2019 tax owed and 2020 quarterly estimated tax.
And many many Americans have houses full of cheap crap that they bought when they got their hands on a few extra buck
full of cheap crap from China
in fact, I notice that people fill their 2-car garage full of cheap stuff from China, and then park on the street.
My daughter has already received her check for $1025.
More fake news?
Her check was delivered electronically.....as predicted by others.
One of Obama's most annoying traits was his incredible self-obsession and tendency to make himself the center of the universe. Everything was me, me, me. Even without the delay, the move reeks of insane narcissism and is beyond tacky.
When did people first have bank accounts?
What do you mean by bank accounts? In the Middle Ages, before going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, people would deposit money with a local Templar chapter in return for a letter with encrypted information written on it in regards to the amount on deposit and how to identify the owner of the letter. When the traveler reached a new town and needed cash they would present the letter to the Templar chapter in that town who would give the traveler the requested amount of money and update the letter to reflect the withdrawal. All of this was done for a fee of course. The advantage was that the traveler didn't have to carry a lot of coins that could be lost or stolen on the road between towns. In any event, banking started to exist pretty much the day after coinage was invented.
I must say that I was a bit miffed that the bank I used, way back when, was closing some branches, including my local branch. I then realized I'd never stepped foot in a bank for years.
I then realized I'd never stepped foot in a bank for years.
I ordered 100 checks a couple of years ago, not certain of the date. I expect when I die some of those checks will still be unused.
Anyone remember long lines of people looking to get some of that Obama stash?
Thousands Mob Detroit Center, Hope for Free Cash
Can you imagine a government office being overwhelmed with thousands of us Deplorables™ standing in line, with fights breaking out no less, hoping to get us some of that Trump stash? Nah, me neither.
This Wikipedia article gives a pretty concise description of the history of banking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
I am outraged and will remain outraged until tomorrow's new outrage is announced.
I have been told for years that Mayor [fill in the blank] and Governor [blank] brought me this nor that improvement, and I'll guarantee that those Obamaphones didn't get that name out of thin air, especially since they were first provided under Reagan.
Why can't Trump have a little fun in an election year? Anyone out there got a Fulbright? A Pell grant?
The Romans often used tax farmers to collect their taxes, since most ordinary people could only pay in kind (livestock, crops, etc.) and only kept minimal quantities of coin on hand, if any. A tax farmer (usually a super-wealthy capitalist or a local syndicate of rich men) would contract with the Roman government to collect the taxes for a province and deliver them in coin. The terms meant that tax farmer could then use rather extreme methods to collect the actual taxes (mostly in kind - goods, livestock, crops, wine, etc.) from the people, convert them into coin, deliver the contracted amount to the Romans, and then keep anything over that amount (hence the legendary harshness of tax collectors) as their cut. The French kings used the same methods, and Voltaire once won a competition for the shortest tall tale by relating one sentence: "There once was an honest tax farmer."
Jesus says the 'image' on the coin indicates to whom it belongs. The larger point he is making is to apply that same reasoning to Genesis 1:27: "God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them."
Sales tax is the largest source of state funding for the state budget, accounting for 57 percent of all tax collections.
Oregon has no sales tax. But the income tax is just a hair's width less than California's, so that's gonna hurt. But it's mitigated by the fact that the biggest demographic in the state is the tattoo'd, pierced barista, who doesn't pay much tax anyway.
As someone who has been working various IT jobs since 1981 and has plenty of experience at all phases of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) I can attest that a simple change like adding a name to the memo line of a printed check can take weeks, or it can take minutes. It depends on how motivated the people involved are.
@Michael The Magnificent:
Can you imagine a government office being overwhelmed with thousands of us Deplorables™ standing in line, with fights breaking out no less, hoping to get us some of that Trump stash? Nah, me neither.
Sounds like the standard content on World Star Hip Hop, which could just as easily be called Blacks Behaving Badly.
I've seen emergency changes that involved troubleshooting a problem, identifying the defect, rewriting the code, developer testing, rewriting the code again, more developer testing, moving the change into UAT (User Acceptance Testing), User rejecting the fix, rewriting the code, developer testing, moving the change into UAT, user accepting the change, and then moving the change into production that took less than a day. Of course the defect was adversely impacting the company's revenue stream.
Wifey and I talked about our checks this morning. Our regular tax returns arrived today, but not the new stimulus check. Regular was about $400 - we used it to zero out our credit cards early (pre EOM) and put the leftover in savings. I'll be putting my portion of the stimulus towards the principal on the car I bought in early March, and wifey will probably put hers in the grocery fund. That might take care of our groceries for a long time (I honestly have no idea how much she spends monthly - I should do something about that). We're both still working so our bills are just - bills. But now our monthly surplus will be bigger and my whip will be paid off sooner. Sounds peachy to me. We're thinking of opening a college fund for my daughter with her portion, but we haven't decided yet. I need to do research and figure out how those work and what types of education they can be used for. For all I know my little girl will want to be an underwater welder.
"I've seen emergency changes that involved troubleshooting a problem, identifying the defect, rewriting the code, developer testing, rewriting the code again, more developer testing, moving the change into UAT (User Acceptance Testing), User rejecting the fix, rewriting the code, developer testing, moving the change into UAT, user accepting the change, and then moving the change into production that took less than a day. Of course the defect was adversely impacting the company's revenue stream."
I've been part of those changes at multiple companies, current one included. I don't use a lot of our field software on a regular basis the same way our crews and supers do, so it's nice to see things from their end once in awhile. The plant guys don't have time to do the testing themselves so it usually falls on whoever is best with software in general. Anytime I have to enter data to verify a fix worked it's fun to rag on the IT guys a little, and they give it right back when I go to test out reporting or recall functions. Then we change it all back, ensure the system's ready, and go live.
In theory, adding a simple signature to a check for printing should be super easy, barely an inconvenience. But apparently the Deep State is full of incompetents as well as traitors.
I don't read Chuck, whatever he said.
We delete him without reading, so... no need to push back. He's on our list of bad faith trolls. The one where it doesn't matter what you say and it's permanent.
I see that he put a long comment in boldface and italics. What a mess. No one should do that, ever.
@Ann:Writing this update, I thought of a question that had never occurred to me before: When did people first have bank accounts? Was Jesus speaking in a context where people kept all their money in coin form?
Ordinary people, if they had money, had coins. The Roman Empire had a capitation tax (literally head tax) so everyone would have had to pay it.
Rich people might have their money in the temples, and the temples kept accounts, but I don't know of any evidence that people could transfer in and out of accounts without actually involving physical transfer of coin.
In other words, Tiberius Caesar would not have taken a draft out of your temple account and allow you to pay your taxes that way. You would need to get the coin out of the temple and pay the coin to the correct official.
Tiberias might confiscate all the money out of the temple, and leave you and everyone else destitute, but that's not really the same thing. His soldiers are going to bust in and actually take the coins, not zero everyone's account and direct the temple to put the balance in his own name.
I look forward to President Trump's response when asked about this at today's task force press conference!
When did people first have bank accounts? Was Jesus speaking in a context where people kept all their money in coin form?
Paul Johnson, in his "A History of the Jews" wrote that the Jews invented Capitalism in the Middle Ages by using letters of credit to transmit money and valuables since they were banned from owning durable goods or land. The Medicis are credited with inventing banking, per se. The Medici Bank was founded in 1397. There was a bank in Siena 100 years before so they must not have been the first. Fibonacci invented calculations with Hindu numbers about 1202 and later invented accounting methods.
The trade in long-distance luxury goods, which is where the money was until-- say, 1800--was often conducted by networks of ethnic or religious traders and merchants. Jews and Armenians were prominent in Hellenistic and Roman times, and Tom Holland argues that Islam's rise is partly a consequence of its success in binding together some relatively minor middlemen and mercenaries into a community of trust . . . by the time the Ottomans took over, they had largely already delegated finance and trade to Phanariot Greeks who understood all that bourgie shit.
Having cousins across the sea, mountains, or desert who can be trusted not to screw you at every turn has always been an advantage, and the Medici and Fugger were not doing anything new in principle.
European warfare in the horse and musket period was dependent to a large degree for cash and supply on often Jewish international finance houses and agents.
In most of the instances, probably little specie or bullion actually changed hands. The banking and credit system by 1800 at the latest was pretty sophisticated.
Narr
The Rothschilds are just the best known
"Restaurants and bars reported a nearly 27% fall in revenue."
Around here, a lot of restaurants and bars are looking at a 100% fall in revenue.
I received my money yesterday (direct deposit from e filing). I sent Trump a thank you note.
Howard said ... Trumper's call for lynching reporters... it's the Christian way
I will settle for drawn and quartered. It's the Medieval way.
On the Jesus story about the coin: In Judea in the early 1st Century, a faithful and observant Jew wasn't supposed to possess a coin with Caesar's image on it: That was a "graven image" prohibited by the Commandments. So when Jesus got his challenger to admit that he had such a coin in his purse, he'd already won the "who's more orthodox?" contest.
BTW, this is the first time I've read a commentary that includes both Trump and Jesus.
>>rhhardin: There's no Trump deposit in my account, but the feds withdrew both my 2019 tax owed and 2020 quarterly estimated tax.
Mayhap you screwed something up there and gave them/let them take something you didn't need to. Per recent Treasury/IRS rulings, neither of those payments is currently due until 7/15. Ditto with the second quarterly estimate that would otherwise be due 6/15. Though, since I once again became a W-2 employee about five years ago after nearly thirty years of being a law firm partner, I don't bother with the estimates. Avoiding the relatively small "penalty"/interest charge for the tax on the non-wage income not covered by withholding just isn't worth the hassle.
>>stlcdr: I then realized I'd never stepped foot in a bank for years.
Except to get some traveler's checks (and even that was quite some time ago), I literally can't remember the last time I actually set foot in a bank.
>>Ron Winkleheimer: I expect when I die some of those checks will still be unused.
Until fairly recently, I needed to use paper checks for real estate and income tax payments. Those barriers have now fallen. The last one that's still necessary is for condo fees that I can't pay electronically without giving the management company the ability to just take money out of my account at will; ain't never gonna happen. Still make a flurry of charitable contributions by check late in the year, but even those are starting to switch over. Recently got a new set of checks that will probably last for quite some time.
>>Foose: The Romans often used tax farmers to collect their taxes
Publicani, like (St.) Luke the evangelist. I think it was in the Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody that Will Cuppy riffed on Shylock's line from Merchant of Venice "How like a fawning publican he looks" with a footnote saying that Republicans could read it as "How like a fawning mocrat he looks."
>>Althouse: When did people first have bank accounts?
Per Hollywood, I "know" that Jewish merchants had some sort of banking system by late twelfth century, e.g., in Ivanhoe, Isaac the Jew (Felix Aylmer, with a young Elizabeth Taylor playing his stunningly beautiful daughter Rebecca and that other old warhorse Finlay Curray playing Ivanhoe's father) being asked whether he could convert a lot of "weighty trash" into a document that would be honored by correspondents, so to speak, in, I think, Vienna in order to pay the ransom for Richard the Lionheart. Otherwise, I would say late medieval Italy around the same time (think Medici) for something we might recognize as a form of banking.
OK, I see Dr. Mike anticipated/largely agrees with me (and Narr more vaguely but earlier), but without the Hollywood angle.
$2400 will just cover the property tax due on our home. I don't think that's gonna stimulate anything.
Maybe it will allow some state bureaucrat to stay home from work for another week.
Brain-washed replies, inspired by the author's leading commentary. How about having Nancy Pelosi's portrait printed on the checks, then? The bill was originated from the House, so she surely participated in the decision making process. But if you say, oh it's gotta be Trump, not Pelosi, then ask yourselves why.
It's ridiculous no matter which way you try to twist it.
We are planning on buying a rower with our Trump dollars. Problem is the company we want to buy it from is closed due to the rona virus.
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