Duplicity

For a few hours of escape from all of the world's troubles, TNB recommends the enjoyable new Julia Roberts/Clive Owen caper film "Duplicity" which deals brilliantly with the world of corporate espionage. Once you have left the theatre (unfortunately not the late, lamented Normal, pictured to the left) you'll be back in reality faced with even more "duplicity", which is defined in the dictionary as double dealing or deceitfulness. Consider the following:

• Perhaps more duplicitous than the much maligned bonuses paid to failed executives, AIG transferred Billions (not a mere $165 million) of its bailout money to various counterparties such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank which it had insured with its arcane credit default swaps. Since without the TARP funds, AIG would have been bankrupt and would have defaulted on its own default instruments, the taxpayers were possibly deceived as to exactly what the bailout was really for (not the only example). BTW, apparently some of these bonuses have been returned (except of course those paid in Europe) and perhaps the ill-conceived (maybe duplicitous) 90% income tax will deservedly die a quiet death.
• Is there a body containing more duplicity than the US Congress? How about Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut who while posing as a populist took huge campaign contributions from the financial services industry (as did another ranking Democrat, NY Sen. Chuck Schumer) and allegedly snuck something in the stimulus package which permitted AIG and other bailout recipients to legally pay the aforementioned egregious compensation? OMG.
• Daphne Merkin, the author of the forthcoming "Jews and Money" (we need this?) wrote an interesting New York Times column about the "casualties "of Bernie Madoff while deceiving the readers by not fully disclosing that her brother is Ezra Merkin, who has been sued by half of New York's wealthy for feeding their money (after sizable fees) to the newest resident of the Metropolitan Correctional Center of NYC. After TNB realized this, another reading of the column showed that she was subtly excusing any of his enablers because of Bernie's charm, aura, etc. etc. OY.

It appears that we just have to learn how to deal with the double dealers. In the Movie "Duplicity" there are at least some triple dealers, but that's fiction, right?