Milo Minderbinder lives on

As I was viewing today’s news and economic crises, the name Milo Minderbinder came to mind. Milo was a character in Joseph Heller’s fictional, satirical novel Catch 22. Milo was the supply officer for a B-24 Squadron in World War II. He ran a side business called M&M Enterprises. Milo reasoned that profits were the highest goal of a society, and that the war was being fought to preserve, first of all, that ideal. M&M hired employees from both sides of the war and sold supplies to both sides. If he made a profit, it was justified in his mind. Milo often used military bombers to transport his goods.
This is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Catch 22. To me, Catch 22 was about madness. Each character, each bureaucratic entity and each nation had its own form of madness.
To understand today’s problems, it helps to apply the madness magnifying glass. One example is the economic collapse of 2008. Most of the laws controlling Financial and Investment firms had been removed or ameliorated after a long campaign by Ronald Reagan and the Chamber of Commerce assuring us that the old Robber Baron corporations now were enlightened and would act honestly and in the public interest on their own.
Only a madman could believe that people driven by greed can act altruistically. The market collapse and Savings and Loan Scandals beginning in 1987 should have been a tip off, but both parties continued the deregulation folly.
Just as Milo Minderbinder’s looney world spun out of his control and left him with warehouses full of goods such as Egyptian Cotton with no markets, modern day Milos, arrogantly calling themselves “Masters of the Universe” discovered that mastering a local economy was beyond their abilities.
Not to worry, they had an abundance of madmen willing to come to their aid. Our politicians decided the thieving “Masters” were more deserving than the victims of their scams.
Joseph Heller is gone, but his madmen characters live on.