Dinar Recaps & Dinar Guru

I’ve received several emails about Dinar Recaps over the past year, asking if I know who is behind it and what I think about them.  Well I think my opinion should be obvious.  I don’t think much of any site that appears to be promoting a pipe dream like “The RV”.  That would include Dinar Recaps.  As I posted in August, their daily revenues are estimated at $225 by Website Outlook, and that’s 365 days a year.  Other web analysis sites put the figures even higher.  Not bad for a strictly rumour/intel site, huh?  It would also include Dinar Guru which was actually created two months before Dinar Recaps, although the tone there is much more guarded IMO.

Before I share my research I think it’s important to note that before either one of these sites came along there was a site called Dinar Rumor, which was created and run by SFMedic from the sites Dinar Veterans and Dinar Speculator.  It was pretty popular for awhile, but after a year or so it lost its sizzle as the other forums absorbed a lot of the rumours into their sites.  Apparently Medic’s strengths were on the intel/analysis side and not on the marketing side.  Thus the opportunity for new sites like Dinar Recaps and Dinar Guru that know how to employ modern internet marketing techniques.

Let’s start with the more popular of the two which is Dinar Recaps.  One of the biggest complaints that I hear about them is that these idiot gurus who never get anything right and obviously are lying through their missing teeth are never challenged about the feces that they fling.  That’s because it’s against the rules at DR.

-Comments must pertain to the post
-No profanity – even if abbreviated
-No rude comments
-No Negativity (translation – No facts that disprove the RV)
-No Fear Mongering (translation – No facts that prove risk)
-No bashing of Intel providers or forums (translation – No facts that disprove guru BS)
-No outside links (translation – No directing people to sites that do the above three)
-No personal information
-No Promotion of outside companies

I’ve made it a policy since I started the blog to build my case about the dinar and the douchebags pumping it with links.  That way I’m only dealing with information that is already public.  I don’t pay for information and I rarely repeat information given to me if I can’t link to it.  Unfortunately I don’t have any links identifying the owners of Dinar Recaps.  But I can provide a few very informative links.  First of all, SweetQueen tells us that the owner goes by the name of Dinarstars.  Next we find a reference to a partner named Big Bird on their About Us page.

Then there is the contact page at the Dinar Recaps site, which states the mailing address as:

Dinar Recaps
PO Box 1090
Edison, NJ  08818

Right below the address it says DRT Distribution.

Hello again, everybody.  This month’s update is pretty much the same as every other month this year.  More douchebaggery from gurus and pumpers and no increase in the IQD.  At the start of the year I made the following predictions. 

“I will stake my reputation on the fact that the value of the dinar will not increase by more than 10% in any given month or by 50% this year unless there’s a lop. The same goes for the Vietnamese dong. I also predict that we will see another indictment of one or more of the douchebags I’ve written about in the past. I predict that Iraq’s M2 will end the year at more than the current figure of 72 trillion unless they redenominate. And finally, I predict that Obama and Maliki will both end the year without being removed from office.”

Well the third quarter of the year has passed and the dinar’s value hasn’t changed.  The dong (VND) has depreciated from 20,820:$1 to 21,125:$1.  To my knowledge none of the douchebags that I have written about in the past have been indicted this year, although I’ve heard rumours to that effect.  I’m starting to sweat that one a bit.  The M2 has grown from about 75 trillion at the start of the year to a tentative figure of about 84 trillion in July.  And both Obama and Maliki are still in office, like it or not.  We’ll take another look at all of this in three months to see how my predictions held up. 

The first week of September saw an on-air meltdown by Phoenix as he agonized over the Obama administration’s apparent determination to conduct a military strike against Syria.  He stated that if he were to tell us the truth he would be arrested.  I strongly doubt that the men in black are concerned about Phoenix Rising radio.  I actually think there’s some merit to what he had to say on this issue.  Maybe if he hadn’t spent the last two years interviewing psychics and talking about comets, electro-magnetic pulse, earthquakes, the Mayan calendar, and the impending revaluation of the Iraqi dinar more people would take him serious. 

Also in the first week Forbes Magazine did yet another feature on the dinar scam called “Inside the Dubious Dinar Revaluation Ruse“.

Breitling referred to the article’s author John Wasik as a “knucklehead with no credibility and no accountability”.  Well here’s this knucklehead’s bio.

John Wasik

As the award-winning author of 13 books, Wasik has spoken to crowds from coast to coast on investing, retirement and protecting your money. As a personal finance columnist/blogger for Reuters, the world’s largest news service, he covers investing/investor protection, financial planning, taxes, insurance, retirement, college and life planning. His columns have been seen in newspapers on five continents and he regularly comments on top economic news in all media. 
He’s also appeared on NBC, NPR, PBS, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, CNNfn, Bloomberg TV and radio and on hundreds of TV and radio stations across the country. He earned his B.A. (psychology) and M.A. (communications) from the University of Illinois-Chicago and resides north of Chicago with his wife and two daughters.
As former special projects editor for Consumers Digest magazine, he has won 18 awards for his columns and investigative reporting, including the National Press Club award for Consumer Journalism. He has spoken at the New York Money Show, the National Home Center Show and the University of Chicago Business School. He is also a popular lecturer on investing at the University of Chicago’s Graham School.
Wasik also has contributed to Reader’s Digest, The New York Times, Bloomberg News, Fortune.com, Morningstar.com, AARP Magazine/Bulletin, eFinancial Careers, Minyanville, Modern Maturity, Parade, Smart Money, Popular Science, Health, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Barron’s, The Chicago Tribune and newspapers across North America.
His books include:

• The Audacity of Help
• The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome
• iMoney
• The Merchant of Power (2006)
• The Bear-Proof Investor (Owl, 2002)
• The Kitchen-Table Investor (Holt, 2001)
• Retire Early and Live the Life You Want Now (Holt, 2000)
• The Late-Start Investor (Holt, 1999)
• The Green Company Resource Guide (NCI, 1997)
• The Investment Club Book (Warner, 1996)
• Green Marketing & Management: A Global Perspective (Blackwell, 1996)
• The Green Supermarket Shopping Guide (Warner, 1995)
• The Electronic Business Information Sourcebook (Wiley, 1987) 

  http://www.johnwasik.net/

As for Breitling, you probably won’t find his bio on the internet but here’s what he has claimed in his YouTube videos.

“Breitling has claimed to be a private pilot, a banker, and a professional investor who knows people at J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup, guys who make $7 million a year on Forex, and people in the military who made a fortune on the Kuwaiti dinar. He claims that he has worked as a corporate recruiter, a video game developer, an investigator for the Justice Department, a political consultant, a real estate consultant, and a network consultant who worked with people at Southern California Edison.   Additionally he says that he has been involved in manufacturing in China, in writing PPMs (Private Placement Memorandums for raising venture capital), and in developing dental equipment for Latin America. B also says that he and his business associates have their own Delarue machine, that he has had cars like a Lamborghini., and that he just bought a race boat that he never even takes out. He also claims that he has contacts in the IMF, the UN, and the US Senate.”

I documented all of this in The Breitling Catalog.  Now who’s the knucklehead with no credibility?

The fact is John Wasik is a very respected journalist for a very reputable news organization, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers.  As an employee of Reuters he has both credibility and accountability, and John has been writing about financial matters for many years to establish himself as an authority on the topic.  He has seen scams come and go and he knows what he’s talking about.  Gurus like Breitling, on the other hand, are almost always wrong about almost everything and yet with the exception of Rudy Coenen never seem to be held accountable.  Well in the words of Susan Boyle, “here’s hoping that will change”.

Also in September some douche named Dave Schmidt did a post called “So Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” at a site called Golden Age of Gaia that made its way over to Dinar Recaps.  This post has Dave telling us that 198 currencies are about to be reset, even though there aren’t that many currencies in the world.  He claims to be a former state senator although he didn’t mention in which state he served.  He went on to claim that Vietnam would back the dong with rice.  I kid you not. 

I did a little digging (yeah I know …. what are the odds?) and found a state senator by that name in the state of Washington whoapparently got himself into some trouble a while back.  Could this be our new dinar guru Dave?  I’m thinking it just might be. http://ullala.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/dave-schmidt-are-you-ready-for-the-change/   

Until next time.

-Sam

Today marks the second anniversary of the launching of this blog.  On Sept. 23, 2011 I wrote my first post “RV Reality Check“.  As I read through that post today I see that everything I said then has held up.  Iraq is still a mess.  Bombs are still going off, their leaders are still at odds, and they still can’t get a handle on the corruption.  Shabibi is gone, Talibani is either dead or disabled.  There’s chaos next door in Syria, and Iran is still a disruptive force.  The dinar has only increased 1/3 of 1%, despite considerable GDP growth which the gurus claimed would produce an increase in the value of the dinar.  A year ago four men were indicted for dinar fraud, three of whom I have written about and included in the blog’s banner.  One of those four has pled guilty, and the others are awaiting trial.  And yet the pumpers are still pumping and the scammers are still scamming.

As I look back on that first post I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand I’m comforted by the fact that events have vindicated me somewhat, but on the other hand I’m embarrassed by my ignorance at the time.  I was under the impression that they were reducing the money supply and thought it was possible to see the dinar increase substantially over time.  A few months later I interviewed John Jagerson and discovered that the largest revaluation in history was barely enough to cover exchange fees for dinar investors.  Currencies just don’t increase that much.  And in researching for my posts I eventually learned more about the importance of exchange rate stability, the history of redenominations, and the nature of managed floats or de facto pegs.  Some of my readers obviously know more than I do about this stuff and have helped me considerably in getting my education.  Thanks guys.

My strength isn’t in economics.  It’s not in investing either, especially currency investing.  My strength is in writing and researching.  I have put my skills to work over the past two years to expose fraud and douchebaggery whenever and wherever I saw the need.  I’ve received numerous emails thanking me for helping people to see through the lies and fraud.  I can’t tell you how rewarding that is.  I was able to take my (self-imposed) misfortune and make something positive out of it.  At the same time I have apparently somehow given some people the impression that I’m an expert on currencies and investing which I am not.  People ask me about this currency or that, whether they should invest in gold or silver, where I think the world’s economy is going …. etc.  How should I know?  LOL!!!  I’m just a guru-buster.  Talk to a professional.  That’s the biggest problem here.  People want to get advice from anonymous hacks on the internet rather than establish a relationship with a qualified professional.  If you wouldn’t get medical advice that way why do you think you should get financial advice that way? 

And now I look to the third year of this blog.  I sincerely hope that I’m not still writing about this nonsense a year from now, but I’m not too optimistic.  At the rate things are moving in Iraq it could be years before their currency reform is enacted, if ever.  I took a break late last year and only intended to post when events warrant, but decided about six months ago that my input was still needed since my search engine ranking was slipping and people weren’t getting the information they needed.  How long I will remain active I can’t say.  There are other excellent sites that are holding the gurus accountable.  MrIQD is one.  Marcus Curtis’ blog Iraq Currency Watch is another.  One of our readers started one called Adam Montana – Not So Real RV Intel that I really enjoy. And of course John Jagerson’s Learning Markets thread on the dinar scam is also great reading.  Events in my life might leave me no choice eventually but to move on.  Whenever and however that occurs I want to thank everybody now for their support.  It has been an incredible experience to say the least.  Cheers.

-Sam