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Thomas Schweich Q&A Part 3: Personal Information

TMT: What’s something people should know about your wife?

Schweich: There’s not a bad bone in her body. She has no bad qualities. She’s a sincere, honest, genuine, nice person who is always looking to help other people out however she can.tom schweich

TMT: The two of you get a night to yourselves, what do you do?

Schweich: Our favorite thing is to watch vintage movies, like from the 30’s and 40’s. We have a large collection of vintage movie memorabilia.

TMT: What’s your favorite piece?

Schweich: I have one of the very few known 11×14 studio oversized photographs signed by Humphrey Bogart.

TMT: What’s her favorite piece?

Schweich: I don’t know what her favorite is. For our 25th anniversary she got a large, 27×41 poster for the movie “North by Northwest,” by Alfred Hitchcock.

TMT: Someone pointed out to me that you have a piece of currency, one of the first pieces of paper currency printed in the United States. Can you tell us about that?

Schweich: When I was about eight, I got into coin collecting. I tried to collect a penny from each year. That expanded as I got older and started buying ancient Greek and Roman coins. You can learn so much about history from the coins. The Roman Empire had an extensive system of mints, because there was no newspaper or media or anything. They’d print out thousands of different coins to celebrate victories or the completion of the Coliseum, as ways to communicate and they also recognized the propaganda value of that. When they went to war in Germany they started minting coins, even though they lost, saying there was victory in Germany. They would try to make defeat look like victory. They used it for information and propaganda.

I started collecting older American money. Copper coins from colonial America, or silver dollars. You can learn an amazing amount of our history that way. I’m a hard currency, no-debt kind of guy and I live a debt free life. I keep gold and silver in the bank because I think our dollar is becoming rapidly worthless. This 20 trillion dollar debt we are going to have in a few years is going to be a real problem. It’s already a real problem, but it could sink the economy. If you look historically, almost every country, almost every great civilization in history, was destroyed by debt, not war. Most of the paper money over the years, the more recent paper money in the past few centuries, they became inflated and inflated until they are worthless. Look at a silver dollar; it has about three quarters of an ounce of silver in it. It was a dollar in 1920 or 1930. Now, the silver alone is worth 25 dollars and they are selling for 30 or 40 dollars, because people recognize the value of hard currency.

TMT: Favorite band?

Schweich: Rolling Stones. I’ve seen them 12 times in concert and I bought the pay-per-view for the 50th anniversary concert. We had a whole group at my house sitting and eating popcorn and watching the Stones rock the house. On December 15th they had the 50th anniversary concert and I had people come over, it was a phenomenal concert.

TMT: Keith or Mick?

Schweich: Well I love them both, for different reasons. The fact that Keith is till up there doing it is a miracle. And Mick, he created the definition of the Rock n Roll front man. I can’t pick between the two.

TMT: Favorite song?

Schweich: Gimme Shelter. Favorite song of all time. My second favorite song is Sweet Home Alabama.

TMT: Senator Lamping and Senator Schmitt introduced a proposal to name a bridge after Stan Musial. Do you support that?

Schweich: I think that’s a great idea.