Just suppose that you have begun a criminal enterprise. Lo and behold, the enterprise is as successful as your dreams. Money flows in torrents. Actually, it begins to pile up all around you. Are you gonna do a "Scrooge" McDuck and jump around in it and maybe frolick in it and toss it around? Maybe for about five minutes and then the novelty of that little exercise will wear off. No more fun, and not only that, the money is still flowing in from the successful criminal enterprise. Are we going to keep filling rooms with cash? What the hell are we going to do? Gotta do something with all this money. We would all like to have this problem and it is a real life problem. Hey! Why don't we become a bank? Better yet, buy a bank. Eureka! Problem solved. It's just like a washing machine for money. Mortgages, personal loans, collateral loans, auto loans, and all earning interest instead of sitting out there in that old warehouse. Not only that, but the ill-gotten gains from the successful criminal enterprise are still flowing in, so the bank is growing bigger, much bigger. New problems on top of old problems because bank customers are investing savings and investment funds. Too much money! Not enough loans. Maybe bigger loans. Great, buy more banks, expand, get mo' money. It's good to be the banker. Hello huge construction projects. Refineries, nuke plants, pipelines, tankers, utilities, trucking, transmission lines, hydroelectric projects. Earn interest on each of these projects all over the country. Buy stocks in all these related industries and promote these industries using the universal lubricant to purchase politicians and news organizations to get these employees reelected. Contracts out the kazoo. Those politicians I bought really work. Gotta buy more. Successful criminal enterprise still working good, there's more of that damn money flowing in every day. Can't get rid of it all. What we gonna do? Eureka! Think big. That's it! That's the solution. Been thinking too small. International, multinational, why didn't I think of this before? International, multinational banks invested in the distribution of basic needs. Energy, oil, this is better than drugs. We can finance everybody, control the flow, control the price, get our political employees to control the regulators, and as long as we can keep everyone addicted to this stuff, we'll be golden. It gets even better. We get paid to send 78% of this stuff up smokestacks and they pat us on the back like we're doing a helluva job, and get us more money. It's good to be the banker. Gotta get rid of them pesky environmentalists, don't wnat any more Jimmy Carter's happening. Chris'sake, he was starting to grease the wheels that would hurt our business. Next thing you know, they'd be trying to make us accountable for the 78% up the stacks. Don't these dipshits realize how good this is for our bottom lines? Imagine worrying about waste and pollution, next thing he'll be trying to blame us. Only one thing to do. Buy more communications media. Gotta get better control of the news, or those dipshits will start preaching waste and pollution. Global warming, greenhouse effect, more hurricanes, and the stories just keep flowing. Hey, great idea here. Employ Ph.d's ("piled higher and deeper") to write papers defending our positions debunking these theories, and use our media to expose our views as the real truth. Obfuscation, ain't it wonderful. It's good to be the banker. What if it all falls apart? Hey, who cares! We're corparate, that would be fictitious entities. They won't be able to lay a glove on us, and if we play our cards right, they'll have to keep paying our salaries as employees throughout any protracted periods of litigation. I just love lawyers, because nothing is illegal unless you have actually been convicted in court, after all the appeals processes. It's just not illegal if you can afford justice. THINK!