Hasbro's classic board game Monopoly has eliminated its jail space, freeing up time for young players more interested in what the company is calling "snack toys." Interestingly, Monopoly's doing away with "jail" can also be interpreted as a statement on the state of the American economy. As John Oliver hilariously pointed out last night on the Daily Show, "The game designed to teach children how capitalism works has removed the 'go to jail option' to reflect the financial system they're going to grow up in, presumably replacing it with a 'get bailed out by congress and then go directly to the cayman islands option.'"
Nowadays, banks like HSBC can get away with massive money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, pay a fine, and sleep in their own beds that night, while kids caught with a joint can face the more punitive punishment of incarceration.
Oliver also used the Monopoly segment to touch on the Goldman Sachs aluminum price-rigging scandal.
“Goldman can bet on the future price of aluminum while simultaneously having the ability to goose the future price of aluminum if that’s something they’d find interesting or profitable,” he said, “In the stock market, that’s what known as insider trading. In the commodities market, that’s known as simply Thursday — or Monday or Tuesday or Friday or Wednesday.”
Oliver wrapped the long segment up with this pensive remark: “Now that you think about it, the new version of Monopoly is actually perfect, you just move pieces of metal around and around in a circle collecting money whenever you want and it’s guaranteed that nobody’s going to jail.”