ARCANALOGUE: "This May Be A Good Time To Retire Your Pig-Nose..."

Political cartoons have always fascinated me, even as a child. I remember reading the comics section of the paper every morning before school and then skipping over to the editorial section on the off chance that I'd actually be able to understand the grownup joke in the Steve Benson sketch. The pig noses, the talking elephants, the horrifying caricatures -- I couldn't get enough of them, and still can't. That side of me was thrilled to see that Victor Juhasz' top-notch illustrations in this month's Rolling Stone, accompanying Matt Taibbi's blistering indictment of the sins of investment firm Goldman Sachs. According to Taibbi, the fraud commited by the investment firm has triggered every financial crisis in the last century.

More specifically, Taibbi blames Goldman Sachs for manufacturing (and ultimately bursting) five market "bubbles": the 1929 stock market, tech stocks during the Clinton administration, the housing craze, gasoline prices, and the Federal government's recent bailouts. The only copy of the article online now is the scan linked above, but it's worth checking out on paper if you get the chance. Apparently G-Sachs' tactic is to buy up the entire market, unsavory bits and all, to drive up confidence; then they sell it off in lots to second-tier investors who are eager to get a slice of the action -- all the while, they're secretly betting against the success of those investments and making a killing when they ultimately fail.

Hence the bailout section of the article -- when banks lost their shirts during last year's market crash, they mostly lost them to Goldman Sachs. Since a considerable amount of the bailout money those banks received was used to pay off that debt, G-Sachs' essentially got paid twice -- first when the bank reaped enormous profits from its fraudulent dealings before the crash, and then again afterward from the government at the expense of taxpayers. Taibbi claims that the next bubble that the bank has its eye on is the Climate Change bill, which is currently on its way to the Senate. I guess if any news story ever warranted a pig-nose or three, this would be the one.

The Five of Coins has always struck me as something of a editorial cartoon. The Waite version shows us a man and a woman hobbling through the snow, and the stained glass window (of what I presume is a bank or church) just overhead seems to mock their condition, hinting that warmth and wealth shall be kept just out of reach. Along with some of the more dramatic Swords cards, it's one of the most savage images in the deck. While the people in it are who we're drawn to, that looming black wall and window are a sort of third character in the image. In this case, wealth and power do not confer happiness or peace of mind -- greed, paranoia, and worry take over and demand that walls are built to shut others out. The worst-case scenario hinted at in the card preceding has come to fruition; desire for power has completely eclipsed reason and mercy, and all -- even the rich -- are worse off for it.

This is an ugly instinct that we all grapple with. No matter which side of the wall you happen to be on, no enduring satisfaction can come from grasping at everything you can get your hands on; that mentality perpetuates itself to the point where peace of mind becomes impossible. There is no magical cut-off point where you will have "enough"-- by the time you reach your goal, you'll have conditioned yourself to push onward and take more. In a reading this card usually points to the restlessness, discomfort, and anxiety that result from our desires, regardless of whether they're fulfilled. This may be a good time to retire your pig-nose and divert your attention to other aspects of life for a while. Generosity is more difficult to cultivate than greed, but it's a much better long-term investment.