Cooking the books
Rewriting history and faking statistics to make it look like the party hit its production targets is Winston's job in 1984, and it occurred to me that a lot of people do that job in our world too. Usually its hedge funds and banks instead of the government. Bernie Madoff ran an enormous hedge fund from 1960 to its collapse in 2008, every year producing amazing returns for his clients. With over 50 billion invested it appeared that he had found an amazing investment strategy, while in reality it was a ponzi scheme of massive proportions. His fund reported imaginary profits, like Winston recorded imaginary production of shoes, until he eventually ran out of cash in 2008. More recently Well's Fargo was caught opening several accounts per customer to pad their internal numbers. Cooking the books at a massive scale happens daily at every major financial firm. If a company was faking records to the scale that happens in 1984, do you think it would stay in the news for more than a day?
This is a GREAT comparison. People seem to shrug off so-called "white-collar crime" in part because they don't understand it and they don't think it affects them (even though it very, very much does). The answer, sadly, is that no, I don't think it would stay in the news that long. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteOh. This is actually quite sad. I think reading the book from Winston's POV (someone who is a cook of these books) makes it obvious to us, when in the real world is it often hidden for a long time until something goes wrong. Not a comforting thought.
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