With the FEDs newest gamble to buy the US out of contraction, the writing is on the wall: The U.S. government is the worlds biggest “whale”.
As Bobby Deniro explained in the movie “Casino” every casino owner loves a whale. Like K.K. Hichikawa, they may have the cash to turn your lights out, but the secret is to keep them coming back for more, because if you can keep them playing they eventually lose it all–the house always wins.

The lure of easy money which destroys marriages, corrupts businesses and sends addicted gamblers into rehab has not only become the obsession of Wall Street, but now our administration is “all in” in the rigged investment bankers game of unwinding derivatives bets.

As we funnel the winnings to the world’s largest banks through AIG, TARP, TALF and whatever we come up with next, the old adage rings true, “You never beat a con man at his own game.”

Most people will agree that the ruling economic class has exploited the middle class dream of home ownership for ages. And yet we all know that no one in the middle class owns their own home–not until they’ve paid a bank 30 times what it’s worth for living in it for 30 years. Same goes for businesses or any entity needing to borrow money for any purpose. These “lender” parasites never worked to produce something or earn sweat equity a single day of their lives–they just lend money for interest. And once these bankers fully drained the easy money from the credit worthy layer–they had to figure out a way to dip into the “subprime” trough, risk-free.

The unique game they conjured up to rig the odds was to package the unrepayable debt into complicated derivative securities, leverage up the ratings and value of them, and then force the government to buy it back through bailouts. So in effect, they will get the interest on their “investment”, and the government can worry about where people will live and how they will eat without jobs–this is not their concern anymore. Getting their money back with interest is all they care about. This is the derivatives game.

When you hear about how “complicated” these derivatives are and how difficult they are to value and we need to pay AIG’s “financial geniuses” millions to unwind them, the JP Morgans and Citi Banks and Banks of America have multiple orgasms. What could be more beautiful than to sucker an entire nation into a game it “doesn’t understand”. This is every casino owner’s wet dream – to have a high-rolling whale in the house who can’t count cards.

As the world, the nation and the states continually turn to the lure of easy money as the only way out of their mounting gambling debts, the old-fashioned honest way of working to earn money loses ground. Jobs are lost, factories close, the economy contracts–and in Florida we turn to the “seminole compact” as the magic bullet to help balance the budget. Let native American Indians expand “gaming” and kickback profits to the state. That way we get in on the game of easy money–looting the gambling addicted and splitting the profits.

Soon, you’ll be rolling dice to see what the interest rate is on your next car purchase. And when you buy groceries at Publix, instead of sliding your credit card through the little reader, you’ll pull a slot machine style lever to see whether you won your food for free, or pay triple the sticker prices. If the latter, you get to “play again” for 20 bucks.
With digital price signs installed at gas stations, long lines of cars will be backed up into the streets waiting patiently for “dollar minute drops”, the secret 10 minute period each day when gas drops from $7.50 to 1.00 per gallon and then back up again. If you’re in line at the right time, you might get gas for a couple bucks, but it only lasts a few minutes and nobody knows when.
Even hospitals can get in on the act and emergency room patients can buy tokens to see which patient is given life saving treatment based on the spin of a roulette wheel.

It’s an exhilarating world of ups and downs, easy money paired with devastating losses – just remember, as the banks have surely taught us — the house always wins.

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