Looking Back

Marx said: "With a profit of 20 percent, capital would stir; with a profit of 50 percent, it would take risks; with a profit of 100 percent, it would dare risk the gallows; with a profit of 300 percent, it would dare trample every law on earth."

The facts proved that what he said was not the truth. Even with only a 5 percent profit, people could disregard morality and the law.

To stimulate economic growth, the Federal Reserve issued loans at 1 percent interest. Commercial banks and mortgage companies then loaned money at 5 to 6 percent interest to people who might not be able to repay their mortgages at all. To fool regulatory agencies, they packaged these low-credit clients as high-credit ones. They had never considered the consequences if those low- and middle-income groups failed to repay their mortgages.

The company set quotas, and salespeople had to meet them. Otherwise, not only would they receive no performance bonus, they would be fired. They were not adding bricks to society's foundation; they were throwing stones into a leaking boat, hastening its sinking.

If the Moses Project did not work and Venice was still going to sink, then buying property in Venice was naturally a bad deal. "Smart people" all knew what to do—use the money embezzled through the Moses Project to invest in real estate in other countries or regions. As long as they hid it deeply enough, no one would know.

Money meant for saving lives and building dams was squandered like this. Sometimes, humanity's baffling behavior was truly hard to understand.

Anyone who looked into Poveglia Island's history even a little would know it was a plague island. Not only would European buyers refuse to buy there, Asian buyers would as well. But the Renaissance palaces on