Mitchell Zuckoff is an American professor of journalism at Boston University. His books include Lost in Shangri-La and 13 Hours (2014).
When running a Ponzi scheme, how does one avoid enormous, unexpected withdrawals - runs on the bank, so to speak - that would pull back the curtain and reveal a little man blowing smoke? One way would be to attract a core of investors who could be counted on to never withdraw more than a small percentage of principal each year.
Sending a book out into the world is a lot like sending your child to the first day of kindergarten. You hope the other kids play nice and that she makes friends.
For starters, let's dispense with the cheap jokes about cannibalism. That means cracks about giving an arm and a leg - sorry - for a good book on the subject, or similar tasteless - sorry, again - attempts to make the subject more palatable - last one.
No Ponzi schemer tells anyone exactly how it works. The purpose of a Ponzi scheme is to trick people, to take the money and run.
I know that plenty of folks have issues with Social Security, but I'd urge them to confront it on its own terms. Calling it a Ponzi scheme is misleading and does more to cloud the issue than it does to illuminate it. And yes, I do know that unless changes are made, the current system is unsustainable. But that doesn't mean it's fraud.
I was researching a different World War II story when I came across an article in the 'Chicago Tribune' from June 1945 that knocked me for a loop. The article explained that a military plane had crashed in an impossibly remote valley of New Guinea that had been nicknamed Shangri-La.
Fear is something i don't you experience unless you have a choice. If you have a choice, you're liable to be afraid. But without a choice, what is there to be afraid of? You just go along and do what has to be done.
My favorite pre-Ponzi schemer was known as '520 Percent Miller' because he promised 10 percent returns a week, or 520 percent a year. Of course he was just using new investors' money to pay old investors, and soon he was on the lam.
Bob Altman got nothing from the TV series 'M*A*S*H,' and the royalties for the theme song went to his oldest son, Michael, who wrote it as a 15-year-old poet!
Nathaniel Philbrick's 'In the Heart of the Sea' has rightfully taken its place as a classic for its literary merits. It has a special place in the cannibalism canon as well.
Every swindle is driven by a desire for easy money; it's the one thing the swindler and the swindled have in common.
We've suffered a "Ponzification" of the economy in recent years, as bubbles have built up and then burst, and each time we act as though it's the first time.