Dylan Bolin

It doesn’t entertain me when good people are taken advantage of, but it REALLY entertains me when rich, bloated plutocrats are.  It probably has to do with the distance of the fall.  Dive off a pontoon into a lake?  That’s nice; enjoy.  Dive off a board fifty feet in the air into a bucket containing a damp sponge?  Popcorn, please!

I am still fascinated by the ways that the sinister human brain has devised to separate a fool from his money.  I love movies like David Mamet’s House of Games.  I like to picture the stock market like a shrinking watering hole in sub-Saharan Africa where skittish gazelles stoop down to wet their noses on dividends, suspicious but unaware of the douchebag Wall Street Grifters lying in wait, trying to look like harmless logs.  As long as the almighty dollar is our life-giving water, someone is going to get taken in a spectacular strike, and instead of the Discovery Channel, we watch it in high definition on CNBC.

So naturally, when I heard about this whole Bernie Madoff, ”Ponzi Scheme” thing, I thought it must be a brilliant new fleecing tool.  I came to find out, however, that it’s simple to the point of being absurd.  If you care to know more about the “Ponzi Scheme,” read on.  If not, go check your email and be well.

First of all, “Ponzi” is an actual person.  Charles Ponzi was an Italian immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1903.  While the “scheme” bears his name, he’s not the first to implement it.  In 1844, Charles Dickens wrote a book called Martin Chuzzlewitt in which he describes the same “scheme,” but “Chuzzlewitt Scheme” just doesn’t sing, does it?

I keep putting the word “scheme” in quotes because, as I researched the “Ponzi Scheme,” I was searching for an actual “scheme;” an intriguing plot, intricate Shenanigans, something that required criminal genius, anything other than what I found.  Forget Madoff, Ponzi and Dickens; today’s “Ponzi scheme” is literally nothing more than robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Let’s say I wanted to initiate a “Ponzi Scheme.”  I would come to you and say:  “Hey, friend, if you give me a thousand dollars, I can guarantee a return on your investment of twenty percent,” to which you would reply:  “Hells Yeah!”  The trick is that I don’t just present this offer to you; I present it to 100 people, all of whom say:  “Hells Yeah!”  Now I have $100,000.  If you ask for your money, I can cover it with the money that the other people have given me, but generally, I’ll just show you a piece of official-looking paper with my letterhead congratulating you on your profit while suggesting that you re-invest it with me to make even more money.  Being a savvy investor and eager to see your money grow, you do.  I go ahead and buy a bass boat and dock it in Bermuda.

This works like a champ until the something happens like, say, the Stock Market takes a dive into a bucket containing a damp sponge.  Then everybody wants to “liquidate their investments.”  (That’s an important-sounding term meaning:  “Gimme my damn money!”)  Then, and only then, are there insufficient funds and my “scheme” is revealed.  Then I get busted and start mailing jewelry to my family so the authorities can’t seize it.

That’s it.  That’s the ”Ponzi Scheme.”  Who would’ve thought that, in this day and age, your money would actually be safer at the Dog Track, and your best investment would be “Soon to be Euthanized” in the fifth.  Unlike Bernie Madoff and his ilk, lying motionless in the shrinking pool of water, dogs aren’t capable of ”schemes.”

-Dylan