Text by Vanessa Baird. Illustrations by Kate Charlesworth
We should thank Bernard Madoff – the Wall Street broker with ‘impeccable credentials’ – who is charged with having swindled investors (including some of his best friends) to the tune of $50 billion. Few individuals have so eloquently exposed how easily gulled are the supposed experts of the financial world.
Madoff highlighted a simple truth: that one of the best ways to fool people is to make things appear rather complicated. Vanity kept ‘sophisticated investors’ from admitting that they didn’t really understand the intricacies of Madoff’s get-richer-even-quicker scheme. Greed and laziness kept them from asking the crucial questions. As long as the money came rolling in – and at 15 per cent the returns were abnormally high – who cared?
There are elementary lessons to be learned from this story – like ‘don’t just trust the experts’ and ‘don’t be scared of asking simple questions’. In the next few pages we will be doing just that. Some of the questions may seem quite naïve. We don’t mind. To be radical you need to get down to the roots of things. And simplicity can be the best tool for doing this – especially in an era that has been dominated by those who trade in obfuscation.
By getting down to the roots we can start to think again about how things should, could be. Suppose, for example, we grew an economic system that put people and planet before pollution and profiteering? For real change to happen it’s got to start now. We need to pluck up the courage to step out from the rubble of the current system and enter an age of possibility.
1 What are BANKS for?
Newint for more