If there is one trite saying I have heard off of the telly enough times to finally believe it is that the Chinese character for “Crisis” is the same character for “Opportunity.” Whenever some feel good, positive thinker lips off about this little factoid I always have the same reaction: a burning desire to pop them in the lip and demand they present academically acceptable citation of that fact. Because, hey! These guys could be gettin’ their thinking from those same losers who tattooed the Chinese character for “Pineapple” above your girlfriend’s coccyx and said it meant “Love” and I just ain’t going in for that. Heck, even if they are right I’ll bet that the ancient Chinese dude who came up with that idea didn’t mean it the way those cheery Ivy League pinheads meant it. He probably meant something like “Crisis = Neighboring Kingdom In Turmoil = Opportunity For Land Grab” not the “Crisis = Lost Your Job = Chance to Learn to Dance” like these wannabe gurus mean it.
But they, and the Chinese, do have a point in that Crisis creates Opportunity. And a huge economic crisis creates huge money making opportunities. Just look at the huge fortunes won by companies during the Civil War when they were able to gorge themselves on big government contracts for military supplies and cheap western land. People were so scared about a war they didn’t even look twice at what they were paying out or what they were buying. Or look at the Trump family, a family that used the Great Depression to build crappy slums for poor people on the Federal nickel and make themselves ridiculously wealthy. The ridiculous battle cry of needing to help poor people was taken up so strongly that it didn’t even matter if poor people were being helped or not and a killing was made!
Thankfully do to the willfully ignorant economic leadership of the last eighteen years we now have a great big money making opportunity for those of us willing to cash in on it.
The problem is I just don’t know what scheme fits our current economic crisis.
I mean I understand the principles of it all: let others be the lemmings running from one sure thing to another always trying to avoid crisis and instead find out where the cash is no one else is looking for, go buy low and sell high, plan for the recovery, present false hope to get somebody else to take the risk (preferably your neighbors through the purse strings of the government), and make sure the little guy always gets screwed even as you claim to be helping him.
So what areas do I apply these principles to? Health care seems like it would be the obvious one being the field EVERYONE is obsessed with right now, but I just can’t see myself wearing a lab coat, even to help con a congressman into writing me into a rider. Maybe getting into Housing, trying to grab up some MacMansions that are stinking up the books of some bank and try to time it right for a rebound.
Oh, I know! Community Organizing! I will organize communities around how they can game the system to build wealth off of recurring economic crises! That’ll be sure to get me Medal of Freedom Award.

-Bob

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