Endurance

Choreographing larceny for the largest heist in history would seem to be a monumental task, but the only thing monumental about it is the mountain of cash being conveyed from the federal vaults into Wall Street moving vans on its way to numbered bank accounts around the globe. With the aid of new developments in television news scripting services, reporters have become -- like politicians -- little more than supporting actors in the story. Videos produced by corporations to simulate what used to pass for news coverage, have now replaced correspondents with stand-ins literally reading from a script written by public relations firms representing the corporations pulling the heist.

I can only imagine the astonishment of golden-parachute CEOs as they continually push the envelope on a corrupt Congress and a credulous public, indeed pushing into the near double-digit trillion zone faster than Arthur Andersen can cook the claimants' books. Whether the extortion of threatening to close down credit (based on a fraudulent claim of illiquidity by the white-collar gang pulling this heist) is ever prosecuted under racketeering laws is one thing. Stopping this larceny before there's nothing left to fund federal obligations is quite another.

The question remains: Who will stop them?