Did Midas Write the Future?
In 1987, Michael M. Thomas, my former colleague at The New York Observer, published The Ropespinner Conspiracy. The title derives from a remark attributed
Jul 31, 2020268.7K Shares3.7M Views
In 1987, Michael M. Thomas, my former colleague at The New York Observer, published “The Ropespinner Conspiracy.”
The title derives from a remark attributed to Lenin, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” The book is a twisted tale of economic ruin, in which a banker working within the system destroys U.S. capitalism by wrecking the internal infrastructure of Wall Street.
Sound familiar?
Well, it did to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who remembered the novel when having lunch with our editor recently. This prompted me to call my old friend Thomas, who’s best known for his brilliant “The Midas Watch” column in the Observer, to see if he felt vindicated by having more or less predicted the collapse of the U.S. banking system more than 20 years ago.
“The book is how a banker brought down capitalism by doing what banks were doing then, like making third-world loans and a bunch of other stuff I quite frankly can’t remember,” said the 72-year-old Thomas from his home in Brooklyn Heights.
“You could argue that subprime mortgages were essentially third-world loans. The third world doesn’t necessarily have to be in Southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. It could be in Ohio along Lake Erie or in the Deep South, where people are sinking into insolvency.
“It doesn’t surprise me how Wall Street connives it’s own destruction,” Thomas continued. “The one thing I think no one expected would be the ripples created by this kind of tsunami and how quickly they’ve spread.”
Rhyley Carney
Reviewer
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