SINCE we were rookies – How is journalism like crime? Like crime, journalism doesn’t pay – colleagues have been diabolically fantasizing about founding a religion as the only way to amass wealth in a hurry.
Every centavo you made would be tax-free, not to mention the state may not interfere in your evangelizing, recruiting members, raising funds for charity and other purposes. Money was your religion as long as it was a matter of faith and hope. Before St. Mother Teresa imparted her famous “Give until it hurts,” we were already quoting the New Testament, “Knock and it will open”: Pray and grow rich. Prey on the innocent for they know not what they do.
Ponzi schemes are nothing new, what’s new is that after so many bloody examples of schemes turned into scams, there’s still a fool being born every minute. They believe in the lies of the glib and the wicked promising heaven on earth at 30 to 400 percent every 30 days. Well, they must have been convinced by preachers reading from the story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
It’s so unfair that those who preach the word, theirs or their god’s, are blessed with a silver tongue (if not a forked one). Their talent makes them more credible than stereotyped politicians, more approachable than the greatest banker they know. There are no complaints yet against the biggest, most successful investment firm of the millennium, with assets of R50 billion in “love offerings” from 5 million members – an auditor’s miracle? Pyramids work when one pulls out at the right time, after making “enough” and just before the crash when the mathematics catches up.
Does greed figure in such dreams? As Hitler believed, “The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.” Just to be clear, his favorite saying (in Latin) was, “The world wants to be deceived, let them be deceived.”
In 2018, a certain Rodrigo Roa Duterte said, “I will stop five-six . . . Or I will stop the collectors.” If he felt that way about money lenders, he shouldn’t be shy about sending bigtime scammers to kingdom come.
