I Go Chop Your Dollar

I found the newest This American Life episode to be a little disturbing. The main segment deals with a group of internet vigilantes who sent a 419 scammer on a long and dangerous journey into one of the most war-torn parts of the world. Okay, the guy is a crook and apparently has no qualms about separating poor and desperate people from what little money they have. But unless this sort of exercise were to act as a deterrent to the fraudsters, I can't figure out what the point is beside providing cheap thrills for a bunch of geeks. It seems a complicated chain of moral justification: The scammers feel justified since they are playing on the greed of people born into a much wealthier society. The "419 Eaters" feel justified in turn that they are playing on greed of the scammers who are often a part of a large organized cartel. I'd feel a lot less conflicted about it if these guys went after the leaders of the operations instead of the underlings. Or maybe while they're at it, they could go after payday loan shops, subprime mortgage brokers and credit card companies who take a hell of a lot more money from the poor and gullible under the guise of "helping" them than any "illegal" fraudster ever did.

Which brings us to the real crooks:

The final segment of the TAL episode was a piece by one of my favorite NPR correspondents (besides Robert Krulwich), Alex Blumberg. I won't go into detail, but it's about the perfectly legal (if not vaguely pornographic) practice of naked shortselling, which essentially amounts to check kiting but with stocks. It just goes to show how something which is considered fraud when a little guy does it is perfectly acceptable for those who purport to be running things. Fuck 9/11 Truthers and the Kennedys, If you want to talk about bladder problems massive evil conspiracies, look no further than the financial sector. Whether bombs or planes brought down the towers or whether the shots really came from the grassy knoll neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket. But when powerful people can simply create money out of thin air to manipulate markets, it robs the savings of every hardworking person who busts their ass everyday to create the wealth which actually backs those dollars.

Over the last few decades all this funny money wheeling and deeling has had the effect of making ordinary people feel richer by lending them more money to buy stuff they can't afford, but eventually the bills come due. That said, the sky is not falling. It's only paper. Worst comes to worst we can barter our skills via Craiglist.