You Can't Make This Stuff Up
Actually, I'm relieved that I can't make up the stuff we've been hearing about this past week; my imagination doesn't seem to be developed enough to conjure the incredible schemes that have come to light from the soon-to-be-former Governor of Illinois and from the manager of a formerly exclusive investment organization.
Corruption in Government
Rod Blagojevich, whose name we have all just learned to spell, will be long remembered as the Governor who tried to sell the Senate seat of the President-Elect of the United States. Among numerous other allegations of graft and corruption, he is said to have threatened to withhold public financial support for the sale of the Chicago Cubs stadium and, perhaps most distasteful, threatened to rescind a grant to Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital unless its board produced a sizable campaign contribution.
Paying off politicians to gain access to the public coffers for public works projects is such an old practice that it's almost an American tradition. But these recent acts take such methods to new depths.
A Trusted Adviser Lets Us Down – Hard
Gaining access to Bernard Madoff's investment funds presumed a depth of social connection and position that merited a private invitation to place your funds under his management. This Wall Street mogul, one-time chairman of NASDAQ, had been around for half-a-century, and his closely held funds earned remarkably steady returns for years, even during the recent plunge in stock prices.
You didn't go to your stockbroker to inquire about buying shares in Madoff's products. Someone you respected would approach you at a cocktail party or country club event and ask if you were interested. "The funds are really closed to new investors," the person might tell you, "but I might be able to get you in." Well, it turns out that new investors really were needed, because their new funds were the resource that paid the dividends to the old investors. It was a Ponzi scheme, a classic fraud.
Mr. Madoff finally gave it up last week as he was out of cash and generally strung out from trying to keep the whole thing afloat. Press reports explain that he told his own sons, who had not really known; they then arranged for him to be arrested. He guesses that the clients are out about $50 billion. Among them are Yeshiva University, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, the owner of the New York Mets, a Senator from New Jersey and many other prominent public figures.
Who Redeems the Debt?
Coincidentally, we began just last Monday to read a new book about debt, this one by an unlikely expert, Margaret Atwood. You might know of her, the Canadian writer, author of A Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin, books of poetry and numerous other works in a variety of literary genres. This one is Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. As soon as we started through it last Monday, we knew we wanted to bring it to your attention. Then the very next morning, we heard about Governor Blagojevich and two days later about Mr. Madoff. Now we really think it's a good read for you – and lots of other people!
Just in October and November, Ms. Atwood delivered a group of radio addresses on CBC known as the Massey Lectures. This is an annual series on the Canadian radio network produced with the University of Toronto. They feature "distinguished authorities" who "communicate the results of original study on important subjects of contemporary interest." Doris Lessing, Conor Cruise O'Brien, R. D. Laing and Noam Chomsky have been among these "distinguished authorities" and most of the lectures are published in book form by the House of Anansi Press. Samples are available for listening on the CBC website: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey.html. All of the Atwood lectures will be available until December 19. The book is offered widely in bookstores, especially including Geranium Farm partner VivaBooks of San Antonio. See it here: http://vivabooks.booksense.com/NASApp/store/Product?s=showproduct&isbn=9780887848001.
Atwood construes debt "as a human construct – thus an imaginative construct – and [she describes] how this construct mirrors and magnifies both voracious human desire and ferocious human fear." [page 2] The individual lectures are titled "Ancient Balances", "Debt and Sin", "Debt as Plot", "The Shadow Side" and "Payback".
She explains that her initial interest in the topic arose out of speculation over real money versus imaginary money. At age 8, she got her first paying job, wheeling a baby around in the snow. She understood the money she received at the completion of each excursion; she did work and she received pay. Then she got a bank account with a passbook (remember passbooks?). Once in a while, an extra amount appeared in the passbook. She had received money, but she had done no work. Was the money – the interest, we would understand – real? It came from some invisible source, not unlike the Tooth Fairy. "I knew from fairy tales . . . that if you ceased to believe in fairies they would drop dead: if I stopped believing in banks, would they too expire?" [page 6] Don't miss the Endnotes to the book. There's one for this: "It is in fact true that if you stop believing in banks they will expire." [page 205] Indeed.
In "Debt and Sin", we meet a "Sin-Eater", a character from several periods in history and literature. If you die without confessing your sins, you are doomed. But there's a way out, a way to be redeemed. Someone else eats your sins: Atwood cites Precious Bane, a novel by Mary Webb that is set in 19th Century Shropshire. The main character's father dies unrepentant. What to do? "Now it was still the custom at that time . . . to give a fee to some poor man . . . and he would take bread and wine handed to him over the coffin, and eat and drink, saying, 'I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man . . . . And for thy peace I pawn my own soul.'" [page 61] The pawnbroker is the Devil, and as you might surmise, being a Sin-Eater is risky in itself. Possibly, the Sin-Eater could ultimately have the misfortune to die unredeemed, and then he would be stuck with his own sins and those of others which he has eaten. There is also another form of Sin-Eater: someone who offers to substitute in death to save the victim from eternal punishment. Atwood tells us about a character in Sumerian legend, Geshtinanna, who volunteers to do just this. The gods are so impressed with her self-sacrifice that they find a way to ease the price for Geshtinanna, reducing her term of punishment in death. The underlying principle: "something is owed; the person who owes it can't pay; then someone steps forward and pays the debt or takes the place of the indebted one." [page 64] A redeemer, then. Hmmm.
What Have We Learned? Not Much!
What have we learned here, between Blagojevich, Madoff and Atwood's book? There are obvious lessons: invest with caution, don't be greedy, go to Confession with some frequency. But the aspect of these circumstances that strikes me is that through them all, we seem not to have learned very much. Whether it's last month in Illinois, 150 years ago in England or 5,000 years ago in Sumer, we make the same mistakes over and over again in money and in life. But, you know, God knows this. He understands it and He tries to help. He sends us Sin-Eaters and Gates-for-the-Sheepfold and Wonderful Counselors and Princes of Peace. That's food for thought for the rest of Advent, isn't it?
Corruption in Government
Rod Blagojevich, whose name we have all just learned to spell, will be long remembered as the Governor who tried to sell the Senate seat of the President-Elect of the United States. Among numerous other allegations of graft and corruption, he is said to have threatened to withhold public financial support for the sale of the Chicago Cubs stadium and, perhaps most distasteful, threatened to rescind a grant to Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital unless its board produced a sizable campaign contribution.
Paying off politicians to gain access to the public coffers for public works projects is such an old practice that it's almost an American tradition. But these recent acts take such methods to new depths.
A Trusted Adviser Lets Us Down – Hard
Gaining access to Bernard Madoff's investment funds presumed a depth of social connection and position that merited a private invitation to place your funds under his management. This Wall Street mogul, one-time chairman of NASDAQ, had been around for half-a-century, and his closely held funds earned remarkably steady returns for years, even during the recent plunge in stock prices.
You didn't go to your stockbroker to inquire about buying shares in Madoff's products. Someone you respected would approach you at a cocktail party or country club event and ask if you were interested. "The funds are really closed to new investors," the person might tell you, "but I might be able to get you in." Well, it turns out that new investors really were needed, because their new funds were the resource that paid the dividends to the old investors. It was a Ponzi scheme, a classic fraud.
Mr. Madoff finally gave it up last week as he was out of cash and generally strung out from trying to keep the whole thing afloat. Press reports explain that he told his own sons, who had not really known; they then arranged for him to be arrested. He guesses that the clients are out about $50 billion. Among them are Yeshiva University, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, the owner of the New York Mets, a Senator from New Jersey and many other prominent public figures.
Who Redeems the Debt?
Coincidentally, we began just last Monday to read a new book about debt, this one by an unlikely expert, Margaret Atwood. You might know of her, the Canadian writer, author of A Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin, books of poetry and numerous other works in a variety of literary genres. This one is Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. As soon as we started through it last Monday, we knew we wanted to bring it to your attention. Then the very next morning, we heard about Governor Blagojevich and two days later about Mr. Madoff. Now we really think it's a good read for you – and lots of other people!
Just in October and November, Ms. Atwood delivered a group of radio addresses on CBC known as the Massey Lectures. This is an annual series on the Canadian radio network produced with the University of Toronto. They feature "distinguished authorities" who "communicate the results of original study on important subjects of contemporary interest." Doris Lessing, Conor Cruise O'Brien, R. D. Laing and Noam Chomsky have been among these "distinguished authorities" and most of the lectures are published in book form by the House of Anansi Press. Samples are available for listening on the CBC website: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey.html. All of the Atwood lectures will be available until December 19. The book is offered widely in bookstores, especially including Geranium Farm partner VivaBooks of San Antonio. See it here: http://vivabooks.booksense.com/NASApp/store/Product?s=showproduct&isbn=9780887848001.
Atwood construes debt "as a human construct – thus an imaginative construct – and [she describes] how this construct mirrors and magnifies both voracious human desire and ferocious human fear." [page 2] The individual lectures are titled "Ancient Balances", "Debt and Sin", "Debt as Plot", "The Shadow Side" and "Payback".
She explains that her initial interest in the topic arose out of speculation over real money versus imaginary money. At age 8, she got her first paying job, wheeling a baby around in the snow. She understood the money she received at the completion of each excursion; she did work and she received pay. Then she got a bank account with a passbook (remember passbooks?). Once in a while, an extra amount appeared in the passbook. She had received money, but she had done no work. Was the money – the interest, we would understand – real? It came from some invisible source, not unlike the Tooth Fairy. "I knew from fairy tales . . . that if you ceased to believe in fairies they would drop dead: if I stopped believing in banks, would they too expire?" [page 6] Don't miss the Endnotes to the book. There's one for this: "It is in fact true that if you stop believing in banks they will expire." [page 205] Indeed.
In "Debt and Sin", we meet a "Sin-Eater", a character from several periods in history and literature. If you die without confessing your sins, you are doomed. But there's a way out, a way to be redeemed. Someone else eats your sins: Atwood cites Precious Bane, a novel by Mary Webb that is set in 19th Century Shropshire. The main character's father dies unrepentant. What to do? "Now it was still the custom at that time . . . to give a fee to some poor man . . . and he would take bread and wine handed to him over the coffin, and eat and drink, saying, 'I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man . . . . And for thy peace I pawn my own soul.'" [page 61] The pawnbroker is the Devil, and as you might surmise, being a Sin-Eater is risky in itself. Possibly, the Sin-Eater could ultimately have the misfortune to die unredeemed, and then he would be stuck with his own sins and those of others which he has eaten. There is also another form of Sin-Eater: someone who offers to substitute in death to save the victim from eternal punishment. Atwood tells us about a character in Sumerian legend, Geshtinanna, who volunteers to do just this. The gods are so impressed with her self-sacrifice that they find a way to ease the price for Geshtinanna, reducing her term of punishment in death. The underlying principle: "something is owed; the person who owes it can't pay; then someone steps forward and pays the debt or takes the place of the indebted one." [page 64] A redeemer, then. Hmmm.
What Have We Learned? Not Much!
What have we learned here, between Blagojevich, Madoff and Atwood's book? There are obvious lessons: invest with caution, don't be greedy, go to Confession with some frequency. But the aspect of these circumstances that strikes me is that through them all, we seem not to have learned very much. Whether it's last month in Illinois, 150 years ago in England or 5,000 years ago in Sumer, we make the same mistakes over and over again in money and in life. But, you know, God knows this. He understands it and He tries to help. He sends us Sin-Eaters and Gates-for-the-Sheepfold and Wonderful Counselors and Princes of Peace. That's food for thought for the rest of Advent, isn't it?
posted by Carol S. | 12/15/2008 10:18:00 AM
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