How To Make Money by Fraud and Get Away With It!

In reviewing the year's events, following years, and years, and years, I have concluded that understanding where the money comes from is a vital clue to understanding the Outer Limits of fraud. First, you have rich parents who send you to the right schools.

Once there, under whatever pretense it took to buy your way in (Thank you papa! Thank you mama!), you make friends, who are just like you and other trust fund babies, and you dream of what you can get away with as soon as you come into your inheritance.

At this point, you must forgive me if you think I'm talking about George Bush Jr., or Bush Sr., or mama mia. I'm talking about all of them. All of them. All who dream of what they can do to get ahead at whatever cost.

So there you are, dreaming, and one day, probably upon graduating, you're offered a job you're absolutely, unequivocally, morally and intelligently unqualified for, so you take it. Nobody said you couldn't smell out a friendly opportunity when it was offered.

However, this is where it gets sticky. Gooey. Gummy. You have to find someone to do your job, and not object when you take credit for their work. Answer. Give 'em a bonus. It won't be from your salary, it'll be from the corporations' productivity. So even though there might not have been positive productivity, at least you can point with pride to where productivity is. Am I speaking about George Bush again?

Now, who do you think gets it in the shorts? That's right. You guessed it. The investor. His family. His dogs and cats. His housemaid - who eavesdropped on the other line to get an insider's glimpse into a world she might one day share in - and thereby send for Emilio, Estavo, Juanita, Joaquin, Abrazos, Carmelita, Jose, the dogs, and the cats and (lest we forget) mama!

However, that won't happen. Why won't it happen? Because these guys are insider traders, and friends being friends, they take advantage of special knowledge, follow where stocks are falling, bet that it's gonna go bump in the night, or soar like a bird, or just piddle, and their company makes a crucial adjustment in who it does business with, how it does business, and kiss it on the ass business...and voila, bonus time!

Still, greed, greed, greed, greed, greed will do you in all the time. You've taken so much money, you've bought so many toys, you have so many mistresses, you've been all over the world three times (each time more boring than the last), and you just forgot that so much money raises suspicions.

You can tell how nervous the AIG CEO was, when he was being questioned by those playing indignant roles, but still, he was repentant. He said he'd be more careful in the future, and that's the best we could hope for, because, you see, if the Justice Department hit this guy with fraud...what would it mean to Congress? Those are the people who let their friends get away with it...thank you Mr. Paulson. Do you happen to know the name of the prison you should be going to?

Oops. Am I talking about George Bush's, and Dick Cheney's, and Condoleeza Rice's, and Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld's friends? Am I talking about the good old boy club, where for the sake of appearance a niecely Tomasina-Condoleeza, and a well-chosen black ex-general are held forth like pinups?

You see, it all comes down to where the money comes from, and when the pieces are put together, the old boy's network is shown to be thriving, money-gorged, and without the slightest conscience. That's why robber barons always got away with murdering some hapless peasant.

The peasant would be trained from his or her early (politically and religiously controlled) schooling, to reason like a dope. Therefore, in the name of patriotism (which they couldn't understand if their lives depended on it, which is why so many lives are lost) the banner to which they gather underneath, and gaze upon so fondly, is in reality a pair of buttocks evacuating atop of your heads. But you just think it's rain.

I'm enjoying this.

So there are our investors. The close to the bundled rich, to those who aspire to be close to the bundled rich, and even those who can't afford the gold-leafed toilet paper of the bundled rich.

Is there any wonder then as to the kind of bonuses the bundled rich give themselves, when it's coming out of someone else's pockets? Of course not. We're Americans! We're patriots! We're so dumb, that these guys will retire to their worlds, separated from ours, because of mommy, and daddy, and being born out of the womb of someone who was heavily connected to the bundled rich...and that's all there is, folks!

So you can bet your bottom dollar, as most of you already have, that except for a rare few, jailing most of these clowns is never going to happen. Instead, we're stuck with embarrassing CEO's, and putting away eighty-four year old wanna-be bundled rich has beens, like Alaskan senators, who surprisingly got caught accepting favors from someone who turned state's evidence...and let the fall guy get it in the shorts.

Why does this story go on, and on, and on, and on.... Well, we wanted to get a handle on bonuses, and fraud, and oddly enough, we find it's all connected! That's how you get away with it. Isn't it wonderful? Aren't we all happy?