SALON

Wednesday, Jan 30, 2013 6:57 PM UTC

Bank heist fantasies find an outlet

California artists run fantasy bank robbery contest pushing ideas about legality and justice after financial crisis

By

Topics: Wall Street, Financial Crisis, Banking, Mortgage Crisis, bank robbery,

Bank heist fantasies find an outlet (Credit: Shutterstock/ vonzolomon)

A new report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program revealed this week that American taxpayers are still on the hook for billions of dollars sunk into bailed out banks. Meanwhile, more than four years since the financial crisis, not one senior Wall Street executive has faced criminal prosecution for fraud despite widespread allegations that bankers ignored pervasive fraud when buying pools of mortgages. It’s little wonder some of us have been dreaming of robbing banks.

Capturing this sentiment, a group of California artists launched a bank heist competition, inviting entrants to dream up and plan out bank robberies. The idea, according to the cultural collective behind the competition, Center for Tactical Magic, is to “re-visit the romantic representation of bank robbers in relation to the current economic and social crises, including: income disparity, unemployment, housing foreclosures, federal bailouts, the LIBOR scandal, and a wealth of other egregious economic indicators.” It’s a playful idea with a $1,000 cash prize for the best heist proposal, which of course does not ask for real bank heists to be carried out, but raises interesting questions about legality and justice in this time of Wall Street malfeasance and impunity.

“The Bank Heist Contest activates this latent desire, but it’s more than that.  It’s a critique of the banking establishments’ own criminal practices, an examination of the bank robber as portrayed in popular culture, a cathartic release of folks’ anger and frustration towards economic disparity, and a crowd-sourcing effort to incite imaginative action,” Aaron Gach, co-founder of the Center for Tactical Magic, told Salon.

Gach and his fellow tactical magicians consulted former bank robbers, former Special Agents of the FBI, security consultants for major banks, bank tellers and lawyers among others to better understand what constitutes a solid heist proposal. He noted via email that entrants sent in so far have been impressive in their sophistication:

People from as far away as Australia have responded and folks are approaching the contest from all sorts of angles.  The responses so far have been pretty fantastic.  Some people have done incredible research demonstrating a real commitment to pragmatism.  Others have taken more absurd approaches. According to FBI statistics, most actual bank robberies are relatively simple note jobs.  However, some pretty sophisticated approaches are being put forward for the contest. Ironically enough, there are a few proposals that are similar but not quite as absurd as actual heists that have taken place.  For example, in 2006 Ren Xaiofeng and Ma Xiangjing used their positions as vault managers to carry out what is now recognized as the largest bank robbery in Chinese history.  With the aid of two security guards, they proceeded to steal over 50 million yuan (~$6.7 million) in 3 heists, spending nearly all of it on lottery tickets. And two years ago in the US, Richard James Verone robbed a bank for $1 to get access to health care while in jail.  There are numerous other bizarre, real-life heist accounts that might give some of the proposals a run for their money.  But one thing’s clear: the jury will have a tough deliberation ahead of them.

According to Gach, the process of thinking through a possible bank robbery could produce interesting and important cultural affects. “It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless against such corporate behemoths that have been judged ‘too big to fail.’  Or, in the case of HSBC or Standard Chartered who knowingly violated US laws, too big to even prosecute,” he noted, adding that the contest “sets the stage for thinking through how these otherwise impenetrable institutions might be regarded as vulnerable.”

 

 

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com. More Natasha Lennard.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 1 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations