Money for Nothing

The trouble with paradise is that you still need a roof over your head, beer in the gullet, and cat food in the pantry. Otherwise, you will get wet, get thirsty, and get a headache from the incessant whinings of the cat. To satisfy these needs, most folks try to earn something somehow, money being a common medium of exchange.
That is our plan. It involves secure employment, and relies upon earning more than we spend, so that there will be something in the mattress for the hard times and the, reportedly, golden years.

Locally (for the locals), this plan is not always applicable. Jobs are hard enough to come by, and they are usually all but secure employment. The currency is not the most stable in the hemisphere, so prices go up and up. What to do, what to do? If only there was a way to quickly turn an unbelievable and completely outrageous profit on the few dollars you do have. If you could roll these profits over a couple of times and earn even more on the spoils, why, there would be enough to pull you out of the hole you are in, and get you back on your feet.

Enter the Partner Plan.

Partner plans have been active on Jamaica for a long time. Classically, they involve a group of people, usually less than a score, who pool their resources for the betterment of the group. As a member of such a plan, you would make a regular payment into the pool. For each period, the total assets of the pool are dispersed to each of the partners in turn. To run such a plan, you get ten of your friends, and have each of them pitch in JA $10,000 a month. Each month, one of the partners draws the entire plan’s sum total of JA $100,000 to spend as he or she sees fit. This partner continues to support the plan until every partner has had the chance to get the big payoff.

It is really a zero interest savings plan, as each partner gets no more or less than they put into the plan. In a land with limited access to banking (or trust of banks), this is probably not a bad way to secure your money, provided that you trust your partners.

As an investment however, Partner Plan Classic leaves much to be desired. Why buy the security of bonds when the NASDAQ might be gaining ten percent a week? Why buy into a zero interest scheme, when there is a more lucrative scheme being promised across town.

Reenter the Partner Plan.

For the last year or so, more evil partner plans have been working the North Coast. This they tend to do every twenty years or so. Essentially a pyramid scheme, they bring in “investors” (one a minute) with promises of 100% return in just a couple of months.

It works like this - the operator prints some flyers, people line up to give him money, he squanders it, and the people lose. Usually, a minimum deposit is on the order of JA $4,000. In three or four weeks, the depositor is promised a draw of JA $3,000, with a second draw of JA $5,000 three weeks later. Of course, the wise and educated investors will be encouraged to rollover their profits, and the plans often keep some, if not most or all, of the initial deposit.

If this were to work, a JA $4,000 initial investment would yield JA $8,000 in six weeks, JA $16,000 in twelve and, by the end of a year, about two million. Not a bad promise considering that there is no product. Unfortunately, the success of the plan is rooted in the need to bring in more suckers, and the harsh reality that there is not much law enforced against these operations, and the unfortunate fact that the media had been giving favorable press to such nonsense.

There were three or four of these plans operating out of Montego Bay through the last half year or so, each operating “for the needy, not the greedy” out of a city storefront. Much more than half of our local staff had money in one or more of them. “How can they lose?” was the most common response to my statements that “they will lose”.

Then I would try to explain how there could never be enough people to support such a scheme, to which I was generally met with blank stares. “How can they lose?”

Of course, they did lose. The amount of new suckers eventually dwindled, and the Plans had increasingly difficult times making payments. The news would spread like the greasy wake of an oil tanker, and then the mobs would gather. Mobs, of course, meaning hundreds and hundreds of unruly citizens - blocking streets, breaking glass, setting a few fires - general mob type stuff.

The operators would then promise to make payments to everyone at a different venue, as the storefront was obviously too small to accommodate the crowds. Everyone then would then shift to the Strand Theatre, where they would do some more mobbing, as the operator would not show. The rumors would then circulate that payments would be made at the Constabulary. Everyone then shifts to the Constabulary, where the mobbing turned into impatient waiting.

Three times the same. Imminent collapse, then the mob, then the Strand, then the cop shop.

At this point, the operators are either off island or in protective custody. One might think that running a pyramid scheme was against the law, but I would not ask any of the investing cops for their opinion on this. The occasional loser did file fraud complaints in some instances, although most did not for fear that, should they file charges, they would lose any chance they might have had to recover their lost savings.

The last one to fail was in Lucea, just west of the office, where the mob looted some local businesses, stoned the courthouse, and set fire to a pair of containers filled with relief supplies for the indigent. The operator claimed that the plan was going well, but people started spreading nasty insolvency rumors, causing a run on the plan. In his defense, he had fully expected monster returns, having invested his entrusted funds in one of the Montego Bay plans.

Money for nothing,... and your chicks for free.