Instead of a Finance Czar, who’d inevitably be bamboozled by his evil court, I propose a roving band of unruly Finance Cossacks to wreak havoc on the sorry ass of Finance. This could have a sort of Roman Circus effect, reducing the possibility of social disorder by distracting the newly unemployed and homeless, who instead of grumbling about their own problems would be rejoicing about other people’s problems.

These would have to be semi-professional New Reform Cossacks trained to make no ethnic distinctions whatsoever during their rampages. (If they were completely professionalized, however, they’d lose much of their effectiveness. Rampaging and havoc are more art than science and can’t really be routinized or adequately described by written protocols.)

One of the hard things about modern finance, from a Cossack’s point of view, is that it’s so abstract that it’s almost impossible to plunder. Beyond the fact that a lot of finance is bankrupt anyway, it’s not like the Cossacks could carry off billions of dollars worth of tranches or commercial paper and monetize it. They’d have to be salaried, and incented with a system of bounties and bonuses.

Sure, we can expect these Finance Cossacks to take over the executive power sooner or later, the way the mostly-Turkish Mamluk soldier-slaves took over in Egypt. Hopefully they’ll be a little better than our present rulers, but who knows? I say go for it.

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