I’m listening to the national news the other day and the subject was gasoline prices. A point made during the segment was that the president is thinking about going after financial speculators who are alleged to be driving up the price of oil and thus creating high prices at the gasoline pump. The question was asked why there have not been more federal prosecutions for manipulation of the oil market by financial speculators. The answer given: The National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) has “technology from the Middle Ages.” Middle Ages: That caught my attention since I have been reading a book on the subject of the crusades of the Middle Ages, the crusades being a series of expeditions from Western Europe beginning in 1095 designed to take back the Holy Land from Muslim hands. All my life I have heard the term “shrewd businessman,” which, by and large, is a positive attribution. When we say a guy is a shrewd businessman we’re typically giving him the stamp of approval for his smart and savvy ways in making a buck and being a success in the world. Imagine my surprise in reading about the crusades and seeing where the “shrewd businessman” was one of the propaganda tools used by the church to get knights and others to “take up the cross,” that is, go on a crusade. As one of the preachers of the First Crusade put it, a “shrewd businessman” is “a man quick to see the profits of this world.” The question was asked, how can such a shrewd businessman pass up a good deal like a crusade when the crusader would gain complete remission of sins and all attending guilt and punishment? It was a bargain that only a fool would pass up the church said. As it turned out, the crusades are among the darkest chapters in world and church history. By “taking up the cross” the crusaders, among other things, raped, plundered, pillaged, destroyed works of art, put tens of thousands to the sword, and even cannibalized when they got hungry enough (seriously, they ate Turks, not turkeys). And, naturally, the kings and princes that took part in the crusades ended up fighting among themselves for the conquered lands once they had slaughtered or defeated the Muslims, Jews or whatever group was on the land at the time. While it is true the church of the Middle Ages was on an equal footing with kings and princes in calling the shots – sometimes the church had the upper hand in that regard – it could be hard to tell which side the players were on without a program. Take one religious figure, Abbot Martin, who, during the fall of Constantinople in 1204, threatened to kill a Greek priest unless the priest showed him the hoard of religious relics in the church. Abbot Martin was a shrewd businessman and made off with lots of loot, including teeth, bones and limbs purported to be from the likes of St. James and St. John – considered valuable relics in that world and time. He is also alleged to have absconded with a piece of the True Cross and a trace of Jesus’ blood. Crusading knights are a thing of the past but the shrewd businessman lives on. In the same way the crusades were preached over 900 years ago, today there are those who preach that anything goes in the American capitalistic system, and it’s all well and good that it’s so. That’s said with almost religious fervor. “Sacking” the American capitalistic system for booty is like “sacking” the quarterback; it’s part of the game; to be expected; everybody does it. It’s downright American to plunder for profit! Me, I’m the last person in the world to expect the world to change. It’s rotten; I know it. And lots of peoples’ core values are rotten to the core; thus there will always be a line of succession through the Madoffs that extends back through the Middle Ages to – what? – the first “pyramid” scheme in ancient Egypt? Right now I’m just hoping to retain my teeth and bones until some “Abbot Martin” in wingtips figures out how to steal them while I’m still kicking.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and author.