Casey: The Morality of Money

From Doug Casey, on "The Morality of Money"...

Besides, crime – real crime, taking from or harming others, not law-breaking, which is an entirely different thing – is for the lazy, short-sighted, and incompetent. In point of fact, I believe crime doesn't pay, notwithstanding the fact that Jon Corzine of MF Global is still at large.

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But that leads me to think about the subject. In the old days, when Jesse James or other thieves robbed a bank, all the citizens would turn out to engage them in a gun battle in the streets. Why? Because it was actually their money, not the bankers'. It was just being stored in the bank; a robbed bank had immense personal consequences for everyone in a town. Today, nobody gives a damn if a bank is robbed – they'll get their money back from a US government agency. The bank has become impersonal; most aren't locally owned. And your deposit has been packaged up into some unfathomable security nobody is responsible for. The whole system has become corrupt. It degrades the very concept of money. This relates to why kids don't save coins in piggy banks any more – it's because they're no longer coins with value, they're just tokens, essentially worthless. All of US society is about as sound as the dollar now.

Actually, it can be argued that robbing a bank isn't nearly as serious a crime today as robbing a candy store of $5. Why? Nobody in particular loses in the robbery of today's socialized banks. But the candy merchant has to absorb the $5 loss personally. Anyway, if you want to rob a bank today, you don't use a gun. You become part of management and loot the shareholders through outrageous salaries, stock options, and bonuses, among other things. I truly dislike the empty suits that fill most boardrooms today.