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THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AS A GAME OF 3 CARD MONTE
You Always Think You Are Going To Win Until You lose
By Danny Schechter
Author of The Crime Of Our Time
We live in a three card monte world. Follow the money as it moves from one shell to another. Now guess where it is. Most of us don't know the hand can be quicker than the eye. That's why mostly everyone who has ever been suckered into playing ends up losing except those who are allowed to win to keep the hustle going. We miss the tricks of the trade even as we swear we know where the winning card or money or ball is/.
Phase one: (http://www.goodtricks.net/three-card-monte.html)
Begin by showing the cards and explaining the game. Do a fair throw, mix the cards on the table slowly, and then turn over the winner. Do this a few times. Without any warning or any change in your pace or handling, do a fake throw and mix the cards slowly on the table. Point to the actual winner, and say something like "You saw it end up over here, right?" They will, of course, disagree with you. Turn it up.
On Tuesday night, Americans were watching the "super primary" in which campaigns in three states supposedly showed which was the 2010 election would go. In one a Tea Party backed candidate, Rand Paul, son of a well known Congressman prevailed, declaring "We will take our government back."
Presumably he meant from the politicians, and from the major parties, but not from Wall Street which at the very hour of his great triumph in the latest Kentucky Derby was burning the midnight oil, trashing what's left of financial reform especially the effort to regulate derivatives.
"It's a bad sign," bemoans the New York Times, " that there are so many unresolved issues"virtually every effort to weaken the bill involves watering down or undoing these reforms either explicitly or by or by adding fiendishly convoluted language that obscures the bill's purpose."
When was the last time you saw the word "FIENDISHLY" in the New York Times
Speaking of fiends, The Financial Times, "reports: "Obviously, the idea is to kill it when no one is looking, which of course serves the industry. If you kill it now (and that is warranted, this is a poorly conceived measure), then the powers that be might have to come up with something sensible. But that might inconvenience the industry. This little finesse is perfect for them."
Example: Writes Tiffiney Cheng of A New Way Forward: "The derivatives bill that Senator Dodd is trying to kill is the part that Joseph Stiglitz called the best part of the ENTIRE reform package-- the last single strongest thing in the bill, the only thing that would really require a change in the way the biggest banks operate, and stops subsidies for toxic bets."
Phase two: Immediately say something like "That's okay! You see, most people, if they see the card go over here," Pick up a loser and the winner in your right hand, and fake throw to the left as you say "here". "figure that as long as they don't bet on either of these cards," pick up the other loser under the winner you are now holding in your right hand. Apparently the winner is to the left and you are holding the two losers. As you say "either of these cards" turn over your right hand to show the lower card (the loser), fake throw to the middle, and then turn your right hand over again to show the same loser again, and drop it to the right. You have, apparently, tossed the winner to the left, and then shown the two losers to be in the middle and to the right.
"The thing is" pick up the middle card, the winner, with the right hand, and then the one to the left, which they think is the winner. "when they bet on this card, they lose." Turn over the right hand to show the loser. Fake throw to the left. "It's only when you bet on this card" flip the card in your right hand face up "or this one" use the card you're holding to flip over the loser on the table to the right "that this one's ever going to be the winner." Drop the card you're holding face up, and then turn over the winner.
And as for action against financial fraud and crime, that's virtually non-existent even on the day that the newspaper of record ran another story on its front page about how Goldman Sachs defrauded its customers and clients.
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