VIRTUAL MONSTERS

Like a lot of folks I’ve been fascinated with dinosaurs since childhood. My first recollection of them was in the Crystal Palace grounds near London in the early ‘40s where there were giant stone depictions of dinosaurs looking like slow pondering beasts lounging around the shores of artificial lakes.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_dinosaurs

 

Modern science and years of archaeological research has brought them into sharper focus and shown that the raptors were agile and voracious beasts designed to kill and eat the equally large vegetarian monsters. There is still some mystery and discussion as to why they suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth. One of the more feasible and supportable theories is that a giant asteroid exploded over what is now the Gulf of Mexico creating a cloud of dust that encircled the planet and blocked out the sun. The result was a blow to plant life causing the extinction of all that ate plants and then the carnivores. The scientists also know that dinosaurs were still around after the catastrophe and they morphed into different and smaller creatures.

 

I’ve always had a suspicion that as the dinosaurs reached their peak of size and aggressiveness they ate themselves into extinction. First eating all the vegetarian dinosaurs and then turning cannibalistic the raptors ate themselves out of existence.

 

This preamble leads me to my main point and introduces the ‘Virtual Monsters’ that we are all faced with in this most recent financial crisis. The banks and many Wall Street financial institutions became so huge and voracious (like the giant raptors) they ‘ate up’ the nation’s assets (the plantlike public) and when those assets were all gone they were forced to devour each other, but none were able to survive in their original form.

 

Now we are in the stage where they are morphing again into different forms, maybe nice furry little critters that are well behaved and well supervised. But don’t bet on it!

 

Virtual monsters have an advantage over the Jurassic versions, they can be instantly regenerated by computers and video screens. The greedy Wall Street types have not been destroyed; they’ve only gone into hiding. We will have to be vigilant and insist that they are kept under strict observation and control, or else we’ll be all eaten up again just like before.