The Maharishi's Mad Money

File under: Satscams, PP COM, Wackadoo Gurus and Gurus Clockin' Dollars

We get the feeling that the S.S. Flying Ass has hit a huge iceberg (in the form of their captain's increasing senility) and is a rapidly sinking ship... after reading about the Maharishi's latest get-rich-quick scheme. They're selling "World Peace Bonds for Poverty Removal" now, 10 trillion dollars worth. That's more than the combined GNP of most of Europe.

If you give them enough money, like $1 million euros, they're guaranteeing a 15% return on your investment, in only 3 years!

They say they're going to do it with "export-orientated organic crops for which there is a large demand, a growing demand.'' The only way they're going to get returns like that is to grow organic drugs, like the whole world's supply of them.

As you'd expect, the pros aren't buying it:

"A 10 to 15 percent interest rate is almost impossible to guarantee,'' says Werner van Bastelaar, a spokesman for the Dutch securities regulator AFM in Amsterdam. "The amount of $10 trillion looks impossible. All in all, any investor wanting to put their money in this should really question whether or not it is too good to be true.''

Obviously, the Maharishi has totally lost it. Or has he? Could this be a sinster plan to force the Maharishi's own currency, the raam, down the throats of those insane enough to actually invest in this madness? You might think so after learning that the Maharishi's point man is Benjamin Feldman, the guy who invented the raam:

In 2000, he became the finance minister of something called the Global Country of World Peace. In 2002, his group introduced its own currency, the raam, for use in Roermond, the Netherlands, and in Maharishi Vedic City in Iowa.

"The raam is a key element in the programs of his Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to promote a balanced world economy,'' it says in a 2002 press release on the Web site of the Maharishi Open University. The press release also refers to constructing 3,000 so-called peace palaces in the world's biggest cities, and establishing "affiliated organic farms'' near each city.

"The raam is a key element... to... establishing organic farms." And what a great way to introduce the raam to the world economy: fleece hapless investors for 10 trillion and then pay them back in funny money.

What's the mad old man going to try next? If they don't stop him soon, he's going to take the entire TM™ empire down with him. It sounds like it's time to put the Maharishi out to pasture.

We suggest locking him in his "love pod" with a couple dozen young groupies and let him live his last days in the idyll of his former glory as guru to the Beatles. It's the most humane thing to do for all parties involved. Except maybe for the groupies.