Thank your local "evil doer"

As Bernie Madoff admitted in federal court to running a “ponzi scheme” and defrauding people out of billions of dollars, I was reminded of the quote by philosopher Bhagavad Gita, “Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed.” What I find fantastic about this situation is that there isn’t one single victim in this whole scandal. Madoff’s actions were abhorrent, but these “victims” absolutely knew better. He was out-promising everybody else on Wall Street, but he had the genius to market it as a limited opportunity and then sat back and watched as the people climbed over each other to throw their money at him. I’ve never met anybody whose parent’s didn’t tell them the most classic bit of advice, “if it’s too good to be true; it probably is,” but the idea of having a leg up on everybody else was just too good to pass up. Bernie Madoff was a good marketing program away from being the Nigerian government official that wants to share Nigeria’s millions of dollars in exchange for “borrowing” your checking account in the United States.

Adam Smith, the father of economics, described greed as an “invisible hand” that pushes us as a society towards prosperity. Utilizing the desire for greener grass, which exists in every human being, is the genius of capitalism. A market that limits individuals’ restrictions to pursuing their dreams is what has made America the centerpiece of the world economy. It is arguable that this country was founded by businessmen that wanted to avoid paying taxes to a king that wasn’t very friendly to business. The one problem with an economic system that is run by anybody with a dollar bill or credit card in their pocket is that the market is always in motion. Just as the pendulum always sways, economic prosperity can be here one day and gone the next. And as the pendulum starts to sway into negative territory, there are always going to be people there to try and snatch that last buck out of the air and there’s always going to be people willing to throw it out in the hopes of getting the new Mercedes or Prius before their next door neighbor.

On the TV show The West Wing, President Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen tells the story of a farmer with a hole in the road in front of his house. The hole was full of water and the farmer complained about how he had to spend all day with his tractor pulling cars out of the hole. In anticipation of paying a wrecker hundreds of dollars, they would always tip the farmer very well and thank him for his generosity. So finally somebody asked him, “If you’re pulling people out of this hole in the road all day, then do you farm your fields at night?” The farmer chuckled and said, “No, at night is when I fill the hole back up with water!” Bernie Madoff had the hole, the tractor, and even put a sign along the highway that read, “This shortcut will take 3 hours off your trip, GUARANTEED,” but the fact that people always choose to ignore the inevitability that there are no shortcuts in life means that there are very few "innocent" victims. In this world of communication and capitalism, shortcuts last only a few seconds before they become the way.

As you all know, I’ve lost a substantial amount of weight in the past 15 months, but I was almost heartbroken the other day when my doctor asked me if now would be a good time to discuss bariatric surgery. She said that sometimes no matter what you do, the weight just won’t come off and this bypasses all of that stress and struggle. It would be one thing if the surgery rewired your body to make you process food differently, but instead they just make your stomach so small that if you eat too much you’ll die. That’s essentially the same as surgically sewing your mouth shut, or better yet, telling a person that you’re going to shoot them in the head if they don’t drop 20 pounds!

I would be more than willing to take a few weeks off and live on a few hundred calories a day, just like post-op for bariatric surgery, if my doctor told me I needed to drop a bunch of weight in a hurry, but it’s easier with the surgery because there isn’t the hell of options and choices as there would be with a voluntary calorie restriction. Since when did limiting your options ever become a good thing?

I think that the scary theme behind all of this is that there are always going to be choices in life, whether we like it or not. You can pass all the laws you want to prevent the Bernie Madoffs of the world from unethically and illegally capitalizing on the greed of others, but there will still be those who choose to do bad deeds just as there are people that will always remember what Mr. Madoff did, but will gladly give their money to the next snake oil salesman that comes along. Why? Because we need that type of behavior for our country and financial system to prosper. We need multi-millionaires to want to be billionaires. We need the billionaires to try to buy up the world because that is what drives us to prosperity. The Bernie Mardoffs are just the cost of doing business. So, don’t pass more legislation or get the government more involved on Wall Street, just don’t give you money to these people! There are perfectly legal, safe, and legitimate places to invest on Wall Street where you won’t risk losing your 401k. “Don’t write checks that you can’t cash.” If you can’t afford to take the risk, by God don’t take it! Because if you lose it then it’s your ass that’s wasting away in some retirement facility in New Jersey while your friends are living out their glory years in Florida.

I heard D.L. Hughley say tonight that “this is the perfect example of what unregulated capitalism can do.” I was enraged by his comments, because I believe that capitalism is responsible for everything in his life, from the development of his iPhone to the existence of a demand, and the funds to pay for him to speak his opinions on the television. After I thought about it, I realized that he was absolutely correct! But, capitalism at its worst is better than alternative markets at their best. In many other countries the genuine manipulators, or villains, would be getting the proletariat to rise up against the bourgeoisie, not steal their money. In other countries, this pendulum swing would be the beginnings of a coup, but instead it happens to be the beginning of one of our finest hours. To top it all off, Mr. Madoff is going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and I assure you any hotel without room service (i.e. minimum security prison) will be prison for a man that lives in a 7 million dollar apartment, and we, as a society get one step closer to figuring out that perfect balance between individual greed and prosperity for all.

The man inside the television keeps trying to tell me of all the hard times that are ahead and we could have another Great Depression on our hands. They try to scare me with stories of “The Dust Bowl” and “Hoovervilles,” but they don’t mention what an incredible accomplishment it was to endure for a country as relatively young as ours. If you ever had a conversation about the Depression with somebody that lived in it, they’ll tell you it was hard, but they also talk about all of the amazing things they did to get by. It always seems that the word, Depression, was the most somber part of the entire conversation. After that, they end up talking about what they used to make their own clothes and the random things they would utilize to improvise a tool they couldn’t afford or to entertain themselves. Today, we look back on that generation of Americans and fondly call them, “The Greatest Generation.”

Those great Americans serve as the perfect testimonial to democracy, capitalism, and the human spirit that freely burns in each and every one of our hearts. History has given us all of the examples of how this sort of storm has been weathered and most importantly demonstrates that we actually can survive the storm!

After 9/11, President Bush went before a national audience and said that the most patriotic thing we can do as a nation is go out and shop. Everybody laughed and called him stupid, but 7 and half years later Congress and President Obama are putting together stimulus bills designed to spend trillions of your dollars. Essentially, it’s the country going out on a huge shopping spree. We as a nation will get through this time, just as they did 60 years ago, when we stop fearing this certainty and make do with the situation that we’re in. I strongly believe that we would be a lot closer to pushing unemployment down and the Dow Jones back up by turning off CNN and going down to the corner and buying a pack of gum. Just 25 cents could be your part in turning us back towards prosperity. You can hardly buy anything with a quarter anymore, but if every American put just one quarter into our economy, it would be a quick 75 billion dollars without any tax increases or expansion of our national debt. We as a country, and a as a society, got ourselves into this cyclical quagmire and we can just as easily get ourselves out of it and it might be just as simple as two dimes and a nickel.

They say that the night is darkest just before dawn and walking away from the sun or hiding your head in the sand isn’t going to get you any closer to the light. The sun will shine again, if you keep moving towards the light. And sure, there are Bernie Madoff’s, Enrons, and Worldcoms in this direction, but I promise you they are the minority and not the majority. I also know that there would be more wolves lurking about if we walked away from the light and remained in darkness. We will make it through this, because that’s what we do in this country. This country was founded on the backs of hard working, society oriented folks that never dreamed their hard work would prosper into this magnificent light that shines around the world as a beacon of hope, freedom, and prosperity. Newsman Charles Kuralt once wrote, “The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.” The people on Wall Street might have put us in this economic slump, but our financial prosperity is always going to be made on Main Street, and that’s why the only money near my mattress is stray change that fell out of my pocket……