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Real Life 2010: One

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  • Real Life 2010: One

    Real Life 2010: One

    I’m working on projects this afternoon, trying to focus, but I’m distracted. Helicopters hover nearby. For over an hour. Loud helicopters. Yes, black helicopters.

    Don’t worry. They were not here to invade iTulip headquarters in our Boston suburb where MIT and Harvard graduates come to breed and avoid sending their offspring to second rate public schools. They rather spend their money on expensive homes and high real estate taxes than on that and private school tuition to boot.

    It’s a place where you see a SWAT team as often as a giraffe. Yet as I tool the back roads to town on an errand, a SWAT team is exactly what I encounter. I take this picture through my windshield.

    I have no idea what’s going on. Police everywhere. Camera crews and reporters from local stations are on the scene chasing the police who are chasing who knows what.

    After I pass through the commotion on my way to the store I call my wife on my smart phone and ask her to turn on the TV to find out what’s going on.

    Nothing reported. Robbery, she suggests.

    When I pull into a parking lot a few minutes later I launch a browser to search Google News. Turns out a couple of bank robbers held up a Bank of America branch in the next town. Here’s how it went.

    The two execute a brazen armed stickup. They get on the highway in a stolen getaway car, police in pursuit. They get off at an exit near my neighborhood. They ditch the car on the road I was on. The police find the car with guns inside. At a roadblock they catch one of the suspects who bummed a ride to the nearby mall to "see his girlfriend" from an 81 year old man--it's unclear how they knew he was in the car--and surround the house I’ve passed after a renter who lives on the second floor calls the police. He reports hearing a break-in downstairs.

    The SWAT team doesn't find the bank robber in the house. As I drive home, this time on the main roads to avoid the scene, I encounter two police cars as they continue to search the area looking for the missing thief.

    In the movies, a clever detective on the scene notices that the second floor renter’s driveway is empty and asks the man who called the police if he owns a car and, if so, where is it? In real life the detective doesn’t think to ask, and the man who called the police is too freaked out by the SWAT team in the yard to notice that his car is missing, at least not until it's too late.

    About an hour after I get home the local press reports that the second bank robber stole the car keys from the renter’s jacket hanging inside the door and made his second getaway in a second stolen car, driving past the police and back onto the highway, headed west.

    By the time the police figure this out, the bank robber is long gone. They're looking for a 2007 Burgundy Volvo X90, Mass. Registration: 75XX90. If his partner doesn’t spill the beans, he got away with it.

    Note to police: We know, it’s harder than it looks.

    Note to bank robbers: Ask Bill Black about robbing banks. If you go to jail, you’re doing it wrong. (See bestwaytorobabank)

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    Last edited by FRED; January 05, 2010, 10:58 AM.

  • #2
    Re: Real Life 2010: One

    Good read - thanks.
    Most folks are good; a few aren't.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Real Life 2010: One

      Originally posted by ThePythonicCow View Post
      Good read - thanks.


      but with helicopters and tasers.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Real Life 2010: One

        Hand in hand with increasing crime goes increasing low level corruption:

        http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/us/18corrupt.html

        It will be interesting to look back in 10 years and ask if the false F.I.R.E. economy was matched by a false feeling of superiority/security from temporarily/artificially low crime/corruption.

        The corruption side of things is the part that actually worries me the most.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Real Life 2010: One

          I live about 25 miles southeast of Wash D.C. and we have recently been plauged with really stupid bank robbers. Last month, a couple of nitwits from DC robbed a funeral home cuz they thought it was a bank. In fact, the employees at the funeral home had to convince these nitwits that the funeral home wasn't a bank. The nitwits robbed the employees of the funeral home & then proceeded to rob the nearest bank, pistol whipping the bank manager in the process.

          And the sheriffs department here hasn't caught these 2 bank robbers yet even though there is literally only 1 highway in & out of our county.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Real Life 2010: One

            Is bank robbery one of the new growth industries?

            I went to my local bank mid-November at 2:00 PM. There was a woman with a clip board standing in front who told me the bank had been robbed that morning and was closed for the day.

            This bank is a little branch in a strip mall on a busy intersection where there is always traffic. Gas station and McDonalds are kitty corner from it. Middle school is across the street. Subway Sandwich shop is 2 stores away in strip mall.

            Of course, I searched Houston Chronicle for more details. Masked men with guns had burst in and roughed up the staff around 10:00 AM. The brazeness of robbery is breath-taking, considering the location, and to my knowledge, they haven't been caught yet.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Real Life 2010: One

              We had a guy robbing drive thru burger joints. He'd pull up, order, then ask for the money at the window. I think he robbed two before they caught him. Talk about stupid.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Real Life 2010: One

                Amazing how if a bank gets robbed even for as little as a few grand they roll out the helicopters and the swat team. However if you get robbed or say carjacked at gunpoint you have to go down to the station and fill out a report no swat team and no helicopter.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Real Life 2010: One

                  Originally posted by ThePythonicCow View Post
                  Good read - thanks.
                  I don't get it . . . what was the point of the article ???
                  raja
                  Boycott Big Banks • Vote Out Incumbents

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Real Life 2010: One

                    Originally posted by raja View Post
                    I don't get it . . . what was the point of the article ???
                    My take: part of the power of itulip, outside the intelligent analysis, is getting a feel for what all of us are experiencing on the ground. This is just one more data point; maybe nothing, maybe something. But it's just a point among the many here in the community, and it just happens to be coming from EJ.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Real Life 2010: One

                      The other part to consider: even as violent crime becomes more prevalent due to desperation, so too will the evolutionary process have its way with this new population of would be professional violent criminals.

                      The stupid ones will get caught; the smarter and also more desperate (due to need) will become harder to catch and more violent.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Real Life 2010: One

                        Originally posted by c1ue View Post
                        The other part to consider: even as violent crime becomes more prevalent due to desperation, so too will the evolutionary process have its way with this new population of would be professional violent criminals.

                        The stupid ones will get caught; the smarter and also more desperate (due to need) will become harder to catch and more violent.
                        yep. what if ej's right about the job market takes > 10 yrs to recover?


                        from Asylum Markets of the post FIRE Economy – Part II: Breaking the Rules - Eric Janszen

                        what's the youth unemployment rate in the usa now? 20% vs 10% in 2006?

                        11 mil still unemployed in 2013? that's plenty of time to grow the criminal/underground economy... pull in youth to a life of crime.

                        if we keep the expansion & refinement of the criminal class going for a decade & what will we get? prostitution. drugs. gangs... but smart & capable, embedded in the culture & institutions like in russia.

                        that's my worry.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Real Life 2010: One

                          Originally posted by EJ View Post
                          When I pull into a parking lot a few minutes later I launch a browser to search Google News. Turns out a couple of bank robbers held up a Bank of America branch in the next town. Here’s how it went.
                          Too late, B of A board of directors beat them to it!

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Real Life 2010: One

                            There are options to calling the police...

                            "...the western financial system has already failed. The failure has just not yet been realized, while the system remains confident that it is still alive." Jesse

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Real Life 2010: One

                              Originally posted by World Traveler View Post
                              Is bank robbery one of the new growth industries?
                              I think it could well be. Here in Ireland there are often news reports of two kinds of robberies:

                              1. holding the bank manager's family hostage in their own house while the manager robs the bank for the robbers. Banks now have a lot less cash in the physical bank than before but I heard another robbery of this sort on the radio this morning for 130,000 Euro. I can't remember the details except it was improvised to get around the new police protocols to prevent robberies of this sort. They used to haul in around a couple of million.

                              2. Ripping cash machines off the walls of restaurants, banks, gas stations etc. In the middle of the night they steal a digger from a nearby building site. Knock down half the wall getting the machine out and then put the machine in the van or car and opening it later. There have been quite a few of these of late. One left a corner wall gone on a fast food restaurant the next morning. The restaurant didn't close though as far as I can remember lol.

                              Comment

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