Indeed, Joseph Smith's notorious Kirtland Bank scandal is compelling evidence that he was a consciously conniving con man.

This is an obvious evidentiary fact, despite claims made in a past thread ( http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1377578,1378592#msg-1378592 ) there Smith possessed a pure and pious heart (meaning he was truly trying to do right) while knowingly lying, cheating and defrauding people for the higher godly good. Hence, the "pious fraud" claim.

Joseph Smith was a fraud, alright, but not a faithful one. His chicanery in the Kirtland banking scandal is ample proof of that. Examine the history of this unsaintly scam of Smith and see for yourself. As RfM poster "Exmosis" observed:

"Yeah, right! Joseph Smith was the victim [in the Kirtland Anti-Banking Society caper]. I'd like to see Steve Benson do an expose on this." (posted by "Exmosis" on "Recovery from Mormonism" bulletin board, 27 January 2013)

OK, then, here we go again, for those who may have missed it the first time:

--Bank on This from Joe and Ollie: Smith's Kirtland Financial Scam and Cowdery's Infatuation with a Local Kirtland "Seeress" While Smith Was Fleeing from Fleeced Mormons

Let's keep it simple: Smith created the Kirtland mess and the Mormon Church created the Kirtland myth. In a nutshell, after Joseph Smith temporarily fled Kirtland, Ohio, to avoid rising discontent over his notorious banking swindle that victimized members of his own flock, Oliver Cowdery's loyalties were tested--and found wanting (as he stayed behind in Kirtland and decided to follow someone else).


--Background on Smith's Kirtland Bank Heist

Smith's criminal conspiracy in setting up a bank swindle was aimed not only at the general public, but at his own flock.

In 1837, Smith faced the wrath of his local Kirtland following due to of his clumsy financial scheming, otherwise known as the “Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company.” The Ohio state legislature had refused Smith's request to incorporate this trash-cash creation of his but a determined Smith chose to illegally run it anyway. It soon went under and Smith, along with co-criminal Sidney Rigdon, were eventually found guilty of violating state banking laws, fined and ordered to pay court costs.

Author Richard Abanes explains why the scam failed:

“Smith actually believed that his debts, along with those of his followers, could be wiped out by merely printing . . . notes [i.e., paper currency] and using them to pay creditors. The bills, however, were practically worthless because Smith had virtually no silver/gold coinage to back up the paper he issued. His entire capital stock consisted of nothing but land valued at inflated prices. . . . He pleaded with followers to support the financial association, leading them to believe that God have given hm the idea and that it would 'become the greatest of all institutions on Earth.'

"To augment their confidence in the organization, Smith resorted to a rather ingenious deception: 'Lining the shelves of the bank vault . . . were many boxes, each marked $1,000. Actually these boxes were filled with 'sand, lead, old iron, stone ad combustibles,' but each had a top layer of bright 50-cent silver coins. Anyone suspicious of the bank's stability was allowed to lift and count the boxes. 'The effect of those boxes was like magic,' said C.G. Webb. 'They created general confidence in the solidity of the bank and that beautiful paper money went like hot cakes,. For about a month it was the best money in the country.'”

Smith's financial shenanigans led to him being sued by several non-Mormon creditors, while some of his LDS followers saw their invested monies evaporate before their eyes.

Historian Fawn Brodie reports in "No Man Knows My History" that Kirtland Saints began attacking Smith, whose “prophesy” (so described by the local LDS newspaper the “Latter-day Saint Messenger and Advocate,” which had declared that those who contracted with him on speculative land deals would get rich) was proven by events to be an uninspired flop. Half the Quorum of the Twelve went into open revolt, with Apostle Parley P. Pratt labeling Smith as “wicked,” accusing him of taking “[him]self and the Church . . . down to hell,” and threatening to sue Smith if he didn't pay Pratt what he was owed. Smith responded by counter-threatening to excommunicate any Mormon who filed suit against a fellow Church member and tried unsuccessfully to have Pratt stand trial before a divided High Council.


Writer Arza Evans, in his "The Keystone of Mormonism" under the subheading, "An Illegal Bank," observes:

"In November of 1836, Smith decided to start his own bank and print his own currency. This new bank was to be called the Kirtland Safety Society. When the Ohio legislature denied Smith's petition for an act of incorporation, he didn't let this stop him from organizing his bank and printing money. He simply ignored the laws of Ohio and went ahead with his bank.

"Smith even had a convenient revelation from God advising Church members to buy stock in his illegal enterprise:

"'It is wisdom and according to the mind of the Holy Spirt, that you should . . . call on us and take stock in our Safety Society.' [see "The History of the Church of Jesus Ch+rist of Latter-day Saints," vol. 2, pp. 467-73].

"About one year later Smith's bank went broke, costing some of his gullible followers their life's savings. Smith blamed this failure on the state of Ohio, his enemies and almost everyone else. He took no responsibility and made no apologies. Apparently, he couldn't even seem to understand why many of those who lost all of their money were angry at him. Ironically, Smith's Saftey Society proved to be anything but safe.

"When Ohio authorities finally realized what Smith had done, they sent a sheriff and a deputy to arrest Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon and other Church leaders who had violated Ohio state laws. Smith and Rigdon escaped arrest by secretly leaving for Missouri in the middle of he night of January 12, 1838. Other officials in the bank were were not so lucky. Josiah Butterfield, Jonathan Dunham and Jonathan Hale were arrested and thrown into jail for circulating illegal currency and for other unalwful banking activies."

The hounded, debt-ridden Smith's ultimate solution to this mounting mayhem was to make himself scarce, opting to leave on a five-week proselytizing mission to Canada--a ploy which historian Brodie described as Smith's hope “that in his absence the enmity against him would be still[ed].”
_____


--Cowdery Compounds Smith's Criminal Kirtland Mess by Hooking Up with a Kirtland "Seeress" After Smith Bolts Kirtland

Smith's hopes that things would cool down over his Kirtland-cooked banking scamwere in is absence were not exactly realized.

Brodie reports that upon returning, he discovered that while he was gone the magic-minded Cowdery had (along with fellow Book of Mormon witnesses David Whitmer and Martin Harris) become enamored with “a young girl who claimed to be a seeress by virtue of a black stone in which she read the future. . . . [Cowdery], whose faith in seer stones had not diminished when Joseph stopped using them, pledged her their loyalty, and F. G. Williams, formerly Joseph's First Counselor, became her scribe. Patterning herself after the Shakers, the new prophetess would dance herself into a state of exhaustion before her followers, fall upon the floor and burst forth with revelations.“ Brodie writes that “before long Smith effectively silenced the dancing seeress” and managed to bring Cowdery's wandering eye back into line. But Cowdery wasn't exactly the model of repentance. He (along with Whitmer) “came back into the fold half-contrite, half-suspicious and shortly thereafter went off to Missouri.

*Sources

--Richard Abanes, “One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church”[New York, New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002]

--Fawn Brodie, “No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet,” 2nd ed. [New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983]

--Arza Evans, "The Keystone of Mormonism" (St. George, Utah: Keystone Books, Inc., 2003)

***********


--Summing Up

For Joseph Smith and his band of bumbling connivers, Kirtland served as:

--first, a place for Smith to fleece his flock; and

--second, a hot spot from which Smith was forced to flee, whereupon it became The Land of Happy-Dance for his Book of Mormon witness friends who, in Smith's fugitive absence, decided to team up with a young prophesying "seeress."

Joseph Smith and his role in Mormon history is, like, so inspiring. So, pious. So, "yeah, right."

Great post Steve.

PS: If fraud was a sport, Joseph Smith would be a hall of famer.

In the banking scandal, Joe faced his first real test as a con man. He passed with flying colors and began using "persecution" as a hallmark. Only God's people could be this persecuted.

Lose their money, steal their stuff, defile their daughters, and hit on their wives. Then it's "Help, help, I'm being persecuted!". Satan is stirring them up again, proving that Joe is a true prophet.

Memory hole? What memory hole? Pay no attention to the Internet.

Does FAIR any legs on refuting this? For example, they say the "fake money box" is a fabrication because it doesn't make sense that C.G. Webb didn't report fraudulent activity and the bank only had a smallish safe, not a big vault that could even hold these boxes.

From FAIR's inbred cousin in Mormon cult crime, FARMS:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1529309,1529309#msg-1529309


But back to those bogus money boxes. Here are some sources:

-"[Webb said] 't]he effect of those boxes was like magic. They created general confidence in the solidity of the bank and that beautiful paper money went like hot cakes. For about a month it was the best money in the country.'”

(Interview by W. Wyl. See "Mormon Portraits," p. 36; also Oliver Olney: "Absurdities of Mormonism Portrayed," p. 4; the letter of Cyrus Smalling in E. G. Lee, "The Mormons"; http://blog.mrm.org/2010/04/church-announces-new-theological-project/)


-"According to several individuals that left the church, the bank was established on fraudulent claims of capital security. They related that the bank vault was lined with many boxes, each marked $1,000. These boxes were actually filled with 'sand, lead, old iron, stone, and combustibles,' but each had a top layer of bright fifty-cent silver coins. Anyone suspicious of the bank's stability was permitted to lift and count the boxes. . . . '"

(Interview by W. Wyl. See "Mormon Portraits," p. 36; the letter of Cyrus Smalling in E. G. Lee, @The Mormons," p. 14; and Fawn Brodie, "No Man Knows My History," pp. 194-98; http://wonderwitch.blogspot.com/2007/05/kirtland-bank.html?m=1).


-"For some casual observers wanting to see the Mormon bank's assets, inside of the vault were boxes "filled" with gold and silver coin. However, the boxes were first filled with sand, and then a thin layer of coin laid on top. This shows fraud, not just mismanagement."

( http://nomormoninwhitehouse.blogspot.com/2012/05/joseph-smiths-mormon-banking-scam.html?m=1 )


-"In order to convince people KSS (Kirtland Safety Society) had money to loan Smith set up a room for people to come and see the boxes of money for themselves. What they didn’t know is that he was conning them before their very eyes. Dr. Wyl wrote the following in 'Mormon Portraits,' p. 36;

“'Lining the shelves of the [Kirtland Safety Society] bank vault… were many boxes, each marked $1,000. Actually these boxes were filled with @sand, lead, old iron, stone, and combustibles" but each had a top layer of bright fifty‑cent silver coins. Anyone suspicious of the bank’s stability was allowed to lift and count the boxes. ‘The effect of those boxes was like magic;’ said C.G. Webb. ‘They created general confidence in the solidity of the bank and that beautiful paper money went like hot cakes. For about a month, it was the best money in the country.'"

( http://lifeafter.org/kirtland-safety-society/ )


-The Kirtland Bank Scandal Proves that Joseph Smith’s Supposed “Piety” was Nothing but a Counterfeit

How much evidence does it take to dispense with the Smith myth that he was supposedly possessed with a pure and pious heart (meaning he was truly trying to do right) while knowingly lying, cheating and defrauding people for the higher godly good?

Smith’s unholy piousness is clearly evident in the Kirtland banking scandal. Let’s look at the clumsy scam—along Cowdery’s infatuation with a local Kirtland "seeress" while Smith was fleeing from fleeced Mormons. After Smith temporarily fled Kirtland, Ohio, to avoid rising discontent over his notorious banking Cowdery’s loyalties were tested--and found wanting (as he stayed behind in Kirtland and decided to follow someone else).

**Background on Smith's Kirtland Bank Heist

Smith's criminal conspiracy in setting up a bank swindle was aimed not only at the general public, but at his own flock.

In 1837, Smith faced the wrath of his local Kirtland following due to of his clumsy financial scheming, otherwise known as the “Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company.” The Ohio state legislature had refused Smith's request to incorporate this trash-cash creation of his but a determined Smith chose to illegally run it anyway. It soon went under and Smith, along with co-criminal Sidney Rigdon, were eventually found guilty of violating state banking laws, fined and ordered to pay court costs.

Author Richard Abanes explains why the scam failed:

“Smith actually believed that his debts, along with those of his followers, could be wiped out by merely printing . . . notes [i.e., paper currency] and using them to pay creditors. The bills, however, were practically worthless because Smith had virtually no silver/gold coinage to back up the paper he issued. His entire capital stock consisted of nothing but land valued at inflated prices. . . . He pleaded with followers to support the financial association, leading them to believe that God have given him the idea and that it would 'become the greatest of all institutions on Earth.'

"To augment their confidence in the organization, Smith resorted to a rather ingenious deception: 'Lining the shelves of the bank vault . . . were many boxes, each marked $1,000. Actually these boxes were filled with 'sand, lead, old iron, stone ad combustibles,' but each had a top layer of bright 50-cent silver coins. Anyone suspicious of the bank's stability was allowed to lift and count the boxes. 'The effect of those boxes was like magic,' said C.G. Webb. 'They created general confidence in the solidity of the bank and that beautiful paper money went like hot cakes, For about a month it was the best money in the country.'”

Smith's financial shenanigans led to him being sued by several non-Mormon creditors, while some of his LDS followers saw their invested monies evaporate before their eyes.

Historian Fawn Brodie reports in "No Man Knows My History" that Kirtland Saints began attacking Smith, whose “prophesy” (so described by the local LDS newspaper the “Latter-day Saint Messenger and Advocate,” which had declared that those who contracted with him on speculative land deals would get rich) was proven by events to be an uninspired flop. Half the Quorum of the Twelve went into open revolt, with Apostle Parley P. Pratt labeling Smith as “wicked,” accusing him of taking “[him]self and the Church . . . down to hell,” and threatening to sue Smith if he didn't pay Pratt what he was owed. Smith responded by counter-threatening to excommunicate any Mormon who filed suit against a fellow Church member and tried unsuccessfully to have Pratt stand trial before a divided High Council.

Writer Arza Evans, in his "The Keystone of Mormonism" under the subheading, "An Illegal Bank," observes:

"In November of 1836, Smith decided to start his own bank and print his own currency. This new bank was to be called the Kirtland Safety Society. When the Ohio legislature denied Smith's petition for an act of incorporation, he didn't let this stop him from organizing his bank and printing money. He simply ignored the laws of Ohio and went ahead with his bank.

"Smith even had a convenient revelation from God advising Church members to buy stock in his illegal enterprise:

"'It is wisdom and according to the mind of the Holy Spirt, that you should . . . call on us and take stock in our Safety Society.' [see "The History of the Church of Jesus Ch+rist of Latter-day Saints," vol. 2, pp. 467-73].

"About one year later Smith's bank went broke, costing some of his gullible followers their life's savings. Smith blamed this failure on the state of Ohio, his enemies and almost everyone else. He took no responsibility and made no apologies. Apparently, he couldn't even seem to understand why many of those who lost all of their money were angry at him. Ironically, Smith's Saftey Society proved to be anything but safe.

"When Ohio authorities finally realized what Smith had done, they sent a sheriff and a deputy to arrest Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon and other Church leaders who had violated Ohio state laws. Smith and Rigdon escaped arrest by secretly leaving for Missouri in the middle of he night of January 12, 1838. Other officials in the bank were not so lucky. Josiah Butterfield, Jonathan Dunham and Jonathan Hale were arrested and thrown into jail for circulating illegal currency and for other unlawful banking activities."

The hounded, debt-ridden Smith's ultimate solution to this mounting mayhem was to make himself scarce, opting to leave on a five-week proselytizing mission to Canada--a ploy which historian Brodie described as Smith's hope “that in his absence the enmity against him would be still[ed].”

**Cowdery Compounds Smith's Criminal Kirtland Mess by Hooking Up with a Kirtland "Seeress" After Smith Bolts Kirtland

Smith's hopes that things would cool down over his Kirtland-cooked banking scam were in is absence were not exactly realized.

Brodie reports that upon returning, he discovered that while he was gone the magic-minded Cowdery had (along with fellow Book of Mormon witnesses David Whitmer and Martin Harris) become enamored with “a young girl who claimed to be a seeress by virtue of a black stone in which she read the future. . . . [Cowdery], whose faith in seer stones had not diminished when Joseph stopped using them, pledged her their loyalty, and F. G. Williams, formerly Joseph's First Counselor, became her scribe. Patterning herself after the Shakers, the new prophetess would dance herself into a state of exhaustion before her followers, fall upon the floor and burst forth with revelations.“ Brodie writes that “before long Smith effectively silenced the dancing seeress” and managed to bring Cowdery's wandering eye back into line. But Cowdery wasn't exactly the model of repentance. He (along with Whitmer) “came back into the fold half-contrite, half-suspicious and shortly thereafter went off to Missouri.

In short, for Joseph Smith and his band of bumbling connivers, Kirtland served as:

-first, a place for Smith to fleece his flock; and

-second, a hot spot from which Smith was forced to flee, whereupon it became The Land of Happy-Dance for his Book of Mormon witness friends who, in Smith's fugitive absence, decided to team up with a young prophesying "seeress."

(Richard Abanes, “One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church”[New York, New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002]; Fawn Brodie, “No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet,” 2nd ed. [New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983]; and Arza Evans, "The Keystone of Mormonism" (St. George, Utah: Keystone Books, Inc., 2003: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1657891,1657900#msg-1657900)



Edited 18 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2017 06:41AM by steve benson.

I'll archive this along with some others shortly. Mormonism is such an obvious fraud when its history is studied.

This is not quite related to the original post, but was on my mind when I reflected on what a scam this so called religion is after reading Steve's summary of the Kirkland bank. A few months ago we were out for dinner with some friends and we had split a couple bottles of wine so conversation flowed to numerous topics. It was a delicious meal and a good time. Then, sigh... I was asked about my Mormon missionary experience. It still feels embarrassing to have fallen for this hoax. Things like the Kirkland bank are obvious and should be enough to send a normal person running. The spin to make it somehow a test of god is absurd at best.

When my shelf was crumbling I asked my zealously TBM MIL about the Kirtland Bank and she replied that JS, while absolutely a prophet sent by God, was in some ways still "just a man" and that God must've inspired the bank idea, knowing it would fail, so that JS would be "humbled and purified" and be ready to enter the later phase of his prophethood so "more fullness" could be revealed (she meant polygamy) and JS would be more holy and prepared for his "Christlike sacrifice."

So according to her, Kirtland Bank was God's fault because He wanted to humiliate JS so he could be spiritually ready to appropriate his community's women and then die in a jail break. To quote my dear MIL, "Isn't the gospel PRECIOUS?!?!?!?"

Just watching her spew such a nauseating spin did a LOT for me in terms of understanding just what an overwhelmingly potent confidence scheme and cult indoctrination I'd fallen for. I mean, the mental gymnastics that woman performed was better than Nadia on the balance beam. I wanted to scream at her, HOW MUCH MORE GLARINGLY OBVIOUS CAN IT GET THAT JS WAS A SLEAZY CROOK?

And I didn't even know about the fake money boxes then. It's so incredibly transparent to me today what a sham and a crock the whole thing is.

behind the failure of Smith's Kirtland Safety Society bank?

Please ask her exactly how, when and where God directly relayed this information to her and the reasons God told her as to why He had specially chosen and designated her to be his assigned messenger on this.

Ask her to get this all from God in writing--delivered by certified mail or, better yet, by an angel--then return and report.

If she refuses to do so, ask her why God told her to refuse to do so. Have her quote God, word for word, on this refusal.

Be prepared to have her shake the dust off her temple slippers on you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2017 04:06PM by steve benson.

ROFL I can just imagine her face. She might shake more than the dust of her slippers...I'm thinking like my neck, until my head falls off. I am, after all, already known by the sacred secret name of THAT WOMAN (BIL says you can hear the caps lock when she says it) in their house.

I should warn you, she IS a pipeline to the Mormon divine. Her patriarchal blessing says she is the family spiritual guide and that she can interpret dreams. AND she gets to live to see Jesus come back too, so there. Lucy Mack Smith herself even appeared to her in a dream to warn her not to go back to Indiana and golly, if a tornado didn't hit her hometown that same week.

This is the woman who told me that garments would protect me from flaming car accidents, radiation from nuclear bombs and rape. But not to wade in a lake with them on or the Devil would get me.

She prohibited all of her children from playing checkers because God hates checkerboards. All of them, everywhere, all the time. Now as far as I know that's not a Mormon thing, just a crazy thing, but she will tell pretty much anyone that she has had visions and personal revelation. So watch out, if you really want me to do this I might return and report with, like, some gold plates or hopefully something that's easier to sprint with in the dark.

Its so pathetic how so many people waste so much of their life (especially their money, time, and emotional energies) worrying about whether or not the Church is true or not. Finding out the truth on this is easy and can thus help people quickly find clarity in direction. So what does it mean to be a true Church? Well it means that the Church is being completely honest/transparent about its history, doctrines, statistics, finances, and everything. It's so marvelous a teaching that we can all become omniscient someday. But in order to get there we're going to know everything about the history, doctrine, statistics, finances, and everything in the LDS church so we might as well get learning some stuff now :)

And don't forget that Moroni 10:3-5 says read->ponder->pray so those who say "pray" without really doing sufficient reading/pondering are getting things out of order and suggesting that its ok to be lazy and ok to harass God. Watch out for those people who pretend to be Honest TBM's when in reality they are very dishonest/deceitful. So thus I advocate strongly for learning everything we possibly can and then being ready to get on our knees and say "dear God is this really the most honest/transparent Church out there" as we seek answer/confirmation on this question.

If you read Church History and come away from it thinking "wow this is such an amazingly forthrightly and transparently honest Church" then you may be on your way to an affirmative answer ;)

. . . in which it attempts to separate you from your income to the tune of 10% throughout your life (calculated either on your gross or your net income), then it is damn well important that people spend the time necessary to decide on whether the Mormon Church is true or not.

Sometimes when people bring up difficult issues it sure can be tempting to actually tell the truth so that people can make honest decisions about the Church. However I have been enlisted to be a part of a Secret Combination that seeks to get gain. So I will tell white lies and do whatever I must do to deceive people into assimilating themselves into the LDS church. Thus I shall say "just have faith" and "doubt your doubts" so you will be guilted into being a good sheep. I also suggest that you guys all read FAIR and whatever the apologists at BYU say because it really doesn't matter to us what the truth is. What matters is that we get you assimilated into being exactly obedient to the Brethren and you learning to unquestioning deceive others and sacrifice everything for their whims.

Also please ignore those Honest TBM posts as they are not approved by the Church Correlation department. If we can suppress such honesty in favor of well correlated explanations on everything then we can end up with a lot more assimilated people in the long run.

True church equals being completely honest. Duh!!

If you want to hear information about the counterfeiting that Joseph and many others in the group were involved in, come to the Exmo Conference and listen to Kathleen Melonakos on Saturday afternoon. 99.9% of Mormons know nothing about this chapter of the history.

Ran across this at a local university library:

Dudley, Dean A. “Bank Born of Revelation: The Kirtland Safety
Society Anti-Banking Company.” Journal of Economic History
(December 1970): 848–53.


Abstract

"On January 2, 1837, in Kirtland, Ohio, a bank which was founded
upon divine revelation, which had no charter, whose officers
were not bankers, and whose capital base was narrow, opened its
doors for business. These, characteristics probably did not
differentiate the bank too much from the hundreds of other such
institutions begun in this period. But the circumstances
attending the founding of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank, or
more accurately, the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking
Company, and the record of its operations are sufficiently
different from the run-of-the-mill wildcat bank to justify a
closer look at the colorful history of this institution."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2017 07:43PM by baura.

Coming from a long line of reputable bankers (yes, they do exist!) I never could come to terms with JS starting a bank without a charter. There was no way that an unchartered bank could be anything but a fraud. This may have had something to do with why my father refused to become a Mormon convert. Unfortunately, I didn't know anything about this when I was converted and I didn't know much about banking at the time either.

"In November of 1836, Smith decided to start his own bank and print his own currency."


I guess god failed to warn his chosen prophet about the imminent Panic of 1837, and the depression which followed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1837

Smith's god, what a jokester.

As the eternally-rationalizing excuse-makers at FAIR declare, the demise of Smith's Kirkland Bank was set in unstoppable motion by the pernicious plots of anti-bank politicians and the unfair denial of credit to loan-starved Mormons by the nation's eastern banks whose morally-rudderless operators had designs on killing pff Smith's bank by burdening it with killer interest rates:

"Question: What were banks like at the time that the Kirkland Safety Society was established?

"Kirtland was not alone in this struggle—hundreds of frontier communities tried to set up banks in the late 1830s

"This sort of situation is difficult for a modern reader to appreciate: we have easy world-wide banking, debit cards, credit cards, mortgages, and lines of credit. Kirtland was not alone in this struggle—hundreds of frontier communities tried to set up banks in the late 1830s.

"As one author remarked:

"'The founders of the Kirtland Bank would have avoided their distress if national and state leaders had allowed financial markets to grow in an orderly manner. One medium-sized, twenty-year mortgage would have solved most of the financial problems faced by these founders.'

"The Saints were land rich but cash poor. Credit was scarce on the frontier, and even specie was in short supply. The Saints could not easily convert their considerable land wealth into cash to pay for purchases. (One cannot, for example, pay someone 1/10 of an acre of land for a barrel of nails!)

"There were no national banks, and many Democrats were strongly anti-bank. Those on the frontier needed help desperately to keep their economies moving:

"'The attitude was, essentially, that "the East won't finance us and if they do, they will kill us with interest.' The conclusion that frontier communities should finance themselves, whatever their hard equity, was not unique to Kirtland. Added to the economic condition of the western frontier was the Mormon impulse favoring self-sufficiency."'

"The failure of the Kirtland bank was not unusual, especially for rural banks—fully half of the banks formed in the 1830s had failed by 1845. This was due in large part to the economic realities of the time:

"'Most economic historians do not believe that banks at that time were usually operated by unprincipled men for selfish ends. More typically, it is the consensus that the instability of bank credit was inherent in the structure of the banking system and involved factors beyond the control of individual banks. The main flaw in state banking in the 1830s was that it was predominantly a rural institution and had little liquidity or shift-ability. In the large cities of the East, loans could be liquidated—that is, turned into cash quickly—by simply calling for payment, but this could not be done in the outlying areas...Thus the reckless and inexperienced management of many state banks was combined with a scarcity of productive commercial loans to create a state banking system with grave weaknesses. As a consequence, most state banks fulfilled their functions at the expense of constant bank failures, violent business fluctuations, and enormous losses to note holders and depositors.'"

("Mormonism and Church finances/Kirtland Safety Society/Background." by FAIRMormon, https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mormonism_and_church_finances/Kirtland_Safety_Society/Background)


Apparently, an unprepared Elohim was completely helpless to save the Lord's frontier bank in Kirkland, Ohio, due to evil, conspiring Democrats and greedy, conniving American banking interests exerting their will on Heaven from the East coast.

The Mormon God is such a wuss. Have you heard how he also caved on polygamy, blood atonement and denying Blacks the priesthood?



Edited 11 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2017 04:22AM by steve benson.

Thank you for your post.

Could you inform as to:

Did the KSS fail due to theft, or poor investments, or both? What happened to the money invested in the bank?

Was Jonathan Hale related to Emma?

After reading your post on counterfeiting, I understand the money was lost in land speculation. Does that account for the majority of the KSS investments?