The big banking scam

As a young child in the 1970s (before the comforts of today’s youths), I remember feeling ecstatic as the carnival rolled into my town. Oblivious to the mysterious rise of burglaries in the town that week, I counted down to the day that the rides and stalls would be set up by these quirky travelling folk who lived in trailers. Then that long-awaited Saturday came, and I gripped my mother’s hand as she led me into a sugary-smelling maze of swirling light bulbs, bells, sirens, and screams. Bless her, whatever it took for her to get a break from her little hellion asking constant questions like why he had to eat his crusts…

Cotton candy in hand, I passed an open tent with red stripes, people throwing balls at coconuts on stands. I ground to a halt, this test of skill gripping me. My mother said it was a coconut shy, and that it was for adults. But she knew by that look in my eye and the stance of my feet that I wasn’t going anywhere until we’d tried to win a coconut. Her protest that we could buy one in Winn Dixie for less than the admission fell on little deaf ears.

With a huff and a roll of her eyes, she handed over the requisite coins to a ratty looking fellow, grabbed four balls, and gave me one. Of course, I missed. But that didn’t matter, as long as we took a coconut home. It was up to her now…

As it turned out, my mother, a basketball team captain in her day, was a pretty good shot. I watched as she pounded those coconuts each time. They should’ve fallen, but they didn’t. Not wanting to see me disappointed, she tried again. No joy. We shuffled away feeling disappointed and cheated. Cheated. I knew those coconuts had to be glued and/or wedged in place.

That was my first memory of loss of innocence: the terrifying realization that the world was a gigantic shark tank where indifferent assassins took your money with a smile on their face. I wanted to sneak back that night and pull a coconut out so I could give it to my mother for her trouble…

I remember dreaming up all the different ways I could go back to that carnival and game them… all the variables, all the math.

Of course, my mother was right. We should’ve just gone to Winn Dixie. If the only objective was to get a coconut, I should’ve considered all the other ways to achieve it, to think laterally. The cold, unemotional objective was to obtain a coconut.

But that night, inspired by a ‘Dennis the Menace’ comic that I read by flashlight under the sheets, I did come up with quite a good plan, one that could’ve worked. But when I ran it past my mother, she said it was illegal, and to go to sleep. But that idea stayed dormant until my adult years where I used it successfully in the ‘coconut shys’ of the investment world …

Back to present day, and all I see are coconut shys, only they have shiny corporate branding, and they call themselves banks. The carnival is here to stay, but the men in suits are the only ones having any fun with it. They think they have all the numbers, the odds priced out perfectly. To make you feel like you can’t beat the house, that you need to give them your money to manage, to leave it to the experts.

Of course, you know by now that it’s all a case of emperor’s clothes, a confidence trick conceived in a board room many pay-grades higher than that smiling lady behind the counter at your local bank, bless her.

Best,

Jim.