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Tomgram: Andy Kroll, Welcome to America, Sucker
Yes, you've heard plenty about Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme, and maybe even about Allen Stanford, the garrulous Texan who built a sprawling Caribbean compound from his $8 billion Ponzi scheme. But what about "mini Madoff," "Miami Madoff" and "Montreal Madoff"? What about all the fraudulent real-estate schemes and farm-grain schemes or the Ponzi built on investments in state-worker uniforms and the one that siphoned off retirement funds from bus drivers? What about the two brothers in Williamstown, Michigan, themselves bilked in a Ponzi scheme, who turned from prey to predator, and used their church and family ties to bilk neighbors out of $50 million for nonexistent gas and oil exploration in the Southwest?
TomDispatch associate editor and regular contributor Andy Kroll has done a remarkable job of mapping the U.S. as a coast-to-coast "Ponzi nation" at a time when an open credit spigot, a booming housing market, and visions of unimaginable wealth on Wall Street left practically every American with dreams of future riches. It was an extraordinary era, one that may have left the "roaring Twenties" in the dust, and its legacy, as Kroll lays it out, is a mood that has its own striking dangers. As he writes, "Disillusionment with the past decade is such that many Americans now simply assume that our world is little but a giant Ponzi scheme."
Kroll concludes: "Ours is now a Ponzi nation. There is a new mood in the land. Just how it will play out is unknown, but a sense of having been conned is still spreading -- as if not just surprising numbers of investors, but the whole country had experienced the last days of a giant Ponzi scheme. With it goes a feeling that what we’ve been living through, even in 'the best of times,' wasn’t an American dream, but pure nightmare. Welcome to America, sucker."
Tomgram: Andy Kroll, Welcome to America, Sucker
By Andy Kroll | TomDispatch
"I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me," Charles Ponzi once told the New York Times. An Italian, who emigrated to the New World in 1903, his glory, such as it was, involved leaving countless immigrants and other Americans with only $2.50 in their pockets and nothing to hope for.
While he was hardly the first Ponzi schemer, he milked his particular con with particular success and dramatic flare in the 1920s. Ever since, his name has been attached to any scam in which you promise outrageous returns -- he offered a 50% return on investment in only 45 days -- and pay off old investors with the money eagerly offered by newer ones. The aura of success only brings in more money until, of course, it all goes bust. Ponzi’s last recorded words to a reporter caught the financial-showman spirit of his time: “Even if they never got anything for it,” he said of those whose lives he destroyed, “it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over." Read more.
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What a remarkably plain description of this American life! Kroll has outlined clearly a cultural phenomena no one can argue with.
I noticed upon my return from Germany in late 1997 just how common the reckless-gambler mentality had taken over most businesses that I came in contact with. It is exactly as Kroll describes here, that it seemed everyone was out to scam everyone as long as it meant quicker and immediate gains. Building customer relations? "What the f**k is that?!" "That's not how you get ahead!" I was unable to join a conscientious business because frankly, I couldn't find one anymore.
I've watched this pattern emerge at both the lowest street levels and the highest white collar, non-profit, educational and governmental levels alike. 'Til just a couple years ago I regularly chummed around with a world-class Futures Contracts investor who, during the '90's, I saw lose a half million and gain half million on different days. This guy was capable of outsmarting the black-jack table to the point of being followed and randomly reshuffled every time he played. One casino kindly asked him not to return. This testified to the kind of mind capable of playing the numbers in Futures. So what would a guy so adept at genuine above-average number-crunching be doing messing around with insider trading? The answer is simple: Making and trading Ponzi's of any and all sorts is addictive to the point of self-destruction, ie, you're already rich but it's never enough, you already got a great deal, but you've got to get a better one, your long time best friend doesn't practice greed, time to change social circles for daily slices of validation for the endless pursuit of ever-more. Of course, I don't think the FBI is buying into it, they probably raided his offices for other reasons.
If you watch ANY TV (I'm guilty only of watching SuperBowl ads once/year to monitor the latest marketing), note the constant acceleration of obsessive-compulsive materialism. Innocuous producers of chicken soup can't even resist the temptation to tell everyone they need a huge plastic-crap McMansion, the latest oversized dinosaur SUV, a stay-at-home mom, and the ever-important ADHD that flickers the screen at you in a constant stream of meaningless but colorful and shocking imagery. The Ponzi in this regard comes through for-profit media corporations whose very zombi-life depends on Chinese peddlers of ever increasing landfill, which in turn fuels the ever-richer Walton family, which in turn props up the Congressional Commodity Exchange in DC, hiring Presidents for their looks. Most families have now lost any clue about the magic-carpet that has been pulled out from under them in the blink of a decade, but that doesn't mean they'll evade paying a dear price, only that they're going to need a lot more entertainment and booze to keep the circus going round.
"We the Consumer" are the bottom-tier of US Ponzi Incorporated. The real, "Real" economy, the small conscientious producer-businesses is impregnated with poverty already, barely holding on to the month-to-month hope that pays bills. This part of our economy represents maybe 3-5% of our GDP, and I'll bet my Ponzi-Loot against your Ponzi-Loot that this is what the future of America, poorer and always guessing whether this is the last month. It's going to be hard for the gambler-addicted as this mass ponzi collapses, but the common American sucker who supported-but-did-not-create all this, is where the suffering will really hurt.
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