Gaming the System

So Security Exchange Commission head Christopher Cox is now spouting out a mea culpa for not checking into serious allegations about Bernard Madoff’s decades-long Ponzi scheme. I love the headline from the Huffingpost: “Christopher Cox Blasts Own Department for Missing Madoff Scheme.” WTF? This is so much bull, I can’t believe it.

This whole debacle which, in some circles say is greater than Enron, is emblematic of our entire current governmental and financial states. Here’s how it goes:

An institution comes up with an illegal or mighty rule bending procedure to make huge profits, continue to do so for years, then when the house of cards falls, we get people in charge like Chairman Cox fecklessly admit that they dropped the ball. These wheeler dealers are repulsive. The God Almighty dollar is the driving force, those in charge turn a blind eye (most likely because they are getting a piece of the action) and the rest of the world be damned.

Of course, when everything starts to crumble, it’s the people that suffer…from personal lost monies and property to the using of their taxes to bail out these greedy bastards.

Let’s start a partial list. We’ll start with Enron. They sucked billions of dollars out of California utilizing a fake “power shortfall.” Then they juggle the books until the entire corporation crumbles, destroying the lives of thousands of their employees. According to the documentary “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” the thinking at the higher echelon was that if an idea sounded good, they tacked a huge profit on the next corporation’s statements just for the thought! Now I’m not by any means an economics expert, but even I know that this is absolutely ridiculous. Puhleeze! Meanwhile, warnings were given but ignored.

How about GM? Their mismanagement is pathetic. All the executives were making their millions, catering to the oil companies and destroying perfectly good electric cars that Americans wanted (You’ve got to love that Chrysler has now announced that they are going to produce electric cars). Of course, they want these same Americans to bail them out. Warnings were given but were ignored.

Now comes Madoff and his vicious game. Thousands of investors are suddenly without their money and charities are folding immediately because they’ve been wiped out by this criminal. Warnings were given but were ignored.

See, this is how it works. Everybody in play knows the game is rigged to make huge profits, but since everybody in play is making money they will politely ignore it. When the shit hits the fan, THEN everybody in play starts hand wringing…moaning a “woe is me, how could we have MISSED this? We’ll do better next time.” Yeah, right. “Better” meaning not getting caught.

The end result is that everybody in play walks away with millions from the scheme, vows to clean up this den of iniquity, then moves on to the next “game” that gives them billions (yes, with a “b”) of dollars, only to hand-wring again once the house of cards collapses.

And let’s not forget that the “Public Servants” in Washington, D.C. who allowed this to happen (read “winked” at the transgressions before the collapse) will move into that very financial sector after leaving the government, whereupon they will start making their millions. This will be in gratitude for their allowing the gaming of the system while they were in government.

Meanwhile, we, the public, will be ignored (i.e., no entitlements capital available), and have our money waiting in the wings as bailout for future gaming of the system so the new generation of economic “experts” from Ivy League colleges can get their millions from us. It’s a tragic Circle Game, ad infinitum.