The United States of Wall Street

On the day this blog goes live the World Cup 2022 will have started with the first match. There is no other way to state that Qatar hosting this once every 4 year event is pure corruption.

If we look at just soccer itself - the country has never qualified for a World Cup ever.

So what led to it winning the project bid? Corruption way up at FIFA presumably due to Qatar's insane wealth and GDP making its way to the pocket of those responsible for the voting.

So lets just make a bullet point list of all the things that make Qatar not a good place for a World Cup.

• Its roughly the size of Connecticut.
• It is insanely hot, so the World Cup was rescheduled to be during winter months.
• Human rights violations and deaths from building stadiums.
• It sucks to be a women there - you can't be alone and have to dress a certain way.
• Alcohol was banned at the stadiums after suggesting it would be allowed.
• Despite the heat - knees and shoulders must be covered.

So this is just sad - I'm not sure how many people took bribes or profited for this, but it seems the world is clearly moving in a direction where wealth talks a lot.

I wouldn't want to be a fan traveling to this World Cup - one little mistake and you might never return home.

Next we have FTX, which somehow if you haven't heard will be labeled as one of the largest financial scandals of all time.

Somehow lost 16 billion of funds via poor trades, fraud, mistakes and more.

There is no real way I can explain this mess of fraud, but plenty of others have done already.

This Patrick Boyle video above has a good explanation of this collapse in a very dry humor video.

So I just can't figure out what I'm more upset about.

• That millions of people were dumb enough to trust FTX with their own funds with return percents that just seem too good to be true.
• That hundreds of firms and investors were dumb enough to invest funds in this corporation without a basic financial look at their books.

Maybe this drive to fraud others of funds is a natural instinct to some. It happened with Madoff and Enron without fancy cryptocurrency, so the unregulated sector of crypto must attract those with a drive to be nefarious.

Its an odd thing when you look at crypto as a whole. Many love it for how unregulated it is and how volatile it is - this leads if played right to major wins. However, when funds are lost the first thing people demand is regulation and restoration of funds.

You can't have it both ways so these users find themselves in an odd position. They want the insane returns of a ponzi scheme in a get rich quick scheme, with all the regulation when it goes wrong.

The crypto ecosystem is going to have some major shakeups in the next few months as this collapse ripples through the exchanges.

If we look at America and time-zones we can see an attempt to end Daylight Savings, which has been stuck in the House since 3/16/2022. I'm not well versed enough in how our government works with bills, but I do know that it blew my mind how many corporations are obsessed with time change.

• Entertainment companies want it darker earlier as folks tend to watch TV if it gets darker earlier.
• Golf wants it brighter longer so more tee times can be used.

It seems all these subset of points all have money at the core. It blows my mind we can't have a legitimate discussion about the impacts of accidents/safety and more with time changes. Instead of having millions of lobbying pumped in to stick to a certain timezone for revenue gains.

I can type all of this though and realize I'm just as affected. I like money - it keeps my lifestyle and roof over my head. So while I haven't been dumb enough to fall for a clear crypto scam, I'm not walking around working for free.

I'm not sure if the world has always been this obsessed with revenue, but I'm sure getting tired of what looks like clear fraud & corruption happening over and over again.