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

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life, this morning, I, Dylan Bolin, can call myself a “winner.”  I’ll explain.  As you know, I’m a huge fan of our new alcoholic beverage masters, MillerCoors.  I’ve said this many times on the air at WKLH and, so far, they have yet to send me a case of their delicious hoppy Happy Juice, but I’ve come to learn that the longer they wait, the more I want them.  So delicious, so sexy.  As you know, sexy isn’t what you give away, but what you don’t give away. 

Now if you don’t already know, recently they ran a promotion on their Lite Beer bottles where you can peel off the label and possibly win a Harley Davidson motorcycle, leather jacket or t-shirt.  So, during a trip to a local watering hole, I ordered one and, quivering with anticipation (or the D.T.’s), peeled off the label.  Underneath, it said:  “Not a winner.” 

I was crushed. 

My feelings of inadequacy are what led me to the bottle in the first place, and here was the bottle telling me that I wasn’t a winner.  At first I thought:  “Same to you, Jerk.  You’re just a beer bottle; you don’t know me.”  I was ready to break the bottle, jam one end into my thigh, lacerating my femoral artery and wait for the sweet release of death, but then I read further and it said:  “Try again,” and suddenly it all made sense.  The beer bottle was breaking me down so it could build me back up.  The measure of a man is not how often he falls, but how often he gets back up, dusts himself off and orders another beer.  So delicious, so sexy and so wise. 

So I ordered another, and another, and another.  Just as I was about to give up/throw up, I ordered one more beer.  I peeled back the label and sure enough there were the words I’d been waiting to see:  “Congratulations, you’re a winner.”  Finally, Grasshopper was ready to stumble out of the temple.  It’s important to add that I then WALKED home.  If there’s one word that describes a winner, it’s “responsible.”  This morning, I mailed the label off.  Soon I will receive a t-shirt worth $11.99 and all it cost me was $15, a hang over and a restraining order.  So every day between now and receiving my t-shirt is like opening another door on the MillerCoors advent calendar.  And thank goodness for it, because it helped me process the news about the economy. Did you guys hear about this about this? 

I thought everything was going along just fine when I was watching television a couple months ago, looking forward to switching between America’s Got Talent and David Blaine’s Dive of Death and getting confused as to which was which, when who should appear but the President of the United States.  I knew it couldn’t be good because he preempted a show called “Dive of Death” to talk about the economy.  He filled the entire screen and told us he needed 700 billion dollars or we would die.  (Later, as we all know, Congress, not to be outdone, raised the tax bill to 850 billion.  Thanks, “People’s House”). 

Anyway, I thought this was a much better approach than when Orel Roberts did it back in the 80’s.  He wanted a lot of money or he was going to die.  It’s true.  He told everyone that God spoke to him and told him that if he didn’t convince his followers to give him something like a million dollars, that God was going to kill him. 

Long story short, he didn’t get the money and he didn’t die.  Which sucked because we all did our part to make sure he didn’t get the money, and we didn’t even get to see how God was going to off him.  Sure I’m bitter, but the important thing is that thankfully, God hasn’t taken a hostage like that in a while.  But the point is that our President told us that we were going to die, and we tend to panic more when we hear that.  Okay, so the President didn’t actually say the words:  “And if we don’t get the money, you will die.”  But he was a bit like the ghost of Christmas Future; he showed us enough that we pretty much knew who was in the coffin at the end. 

So we’re on the brink of an economic meltdown.  This came as a complete shock to me because I had just read that, in 2007, the CEO’s of Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley paid themselves a record, combined 39 billion dollars in bonuses.  You don’t get a bonus unless you’re doing a really great job, right?  So clearly, this problem took them completely by surprise. 

But if my beer bottle lesson taught me anything, it’s that we can’t give up.  There are billionaires out there who need your help and you tax payers have got to step up.  I say you taxpayers because I don’t pay taxes.  I took a cue from these Wall Street firms a long time ago and got a P.O. Box in Bermuda, but everybody else has got to answer the call, even if it means a second, third or even a fourth job.  (To the I.R.S.:  That was a joke.  Ha, ha.)

In the meantime, I implore my good friends at MillerCoors, in their delicious, sexy wisdom, to borrow a page from Campbell’s Soup and their Labels for Education program.  Instead of labels that offer t-shirts to folks like me, why not labels that earn points for Wall Street.  If nothing else, perhaps we can provide these Wall Street investment firms with the calculators that they so desperately need.

-Dylan