The Central Bank of Scandals

In Albania it seems we have created a new financial institution.

It has no headquarters. It has no governor. It publishes no balance sheet. It holds no press conferences.

But it works brilliantly.
It is called the Central Bank of Scandals.

And its monetary policy is very simple:

When interest in a scandal falls, a new video is issued.

That’s it.

There is no need for reforms, investigative commissions or press conferences. All it takes is a phone, some intimate material and someone who decides the moment has come to put it on the market.
And the market reacts immediately.

Yesterday the talk was about Vlora and Agasi.

Today the talk is about Hila and the intimate videos.

Tomorrow, God knows what will come out of the archive of Albanian phones.

This is the monetary policy of distraction.
When an issue is becoming too troublesome, the Central Bank of Scandals intervenes in the market.

It throws in liquidity.

Not money.

Videos.

And inflation starts immediately.
The public that yesterday asked:

“How did these materials come out of an investigation?”

today asks:

“Who is in the next video?”

And that is the most ingenious part of the mechanism.

You don’t need to bring down the first story.

It is enough to bury it under a dirtier, more intimate, more curious and more clickable story.

The old scandal is not refuted. It is simply deprived of oxygen.

It is like inflation.

When you have a lot of money in circulation, money loses its value.

When you have a lot of scandals in circulation, scandal loses attention.

And so the public moves from one video to another like a customer in a supermarket of scandals.

“Give me the Vlora one.”

“No, wait, now we have a Hila one.”

“What about Agasi?”

“Forget Agasi, there’s a new offer out.”

Two videos for the price of one scandal.

The problem is that here we do not only have a question of morality or privacy.

If intimate materials have been published without the consent of the people who appear in them, the serious question is: who took them out, who distributed them and for what purpose?

Because the videos of Agasi and Vlora too, regardless of what they contain and what investigative value they may have, have become public through leaks that raise that same fundamental question:

How do materials leave the hands of institutions and end up in the hands of the public?

But as soon as that question starts to become worrying, the market needs a new product.

And here comes the next video.

The Bank intervenes.

The interest rate on the old scandal falls.

The exchange rate of the new video rises.

The media takes off.

Social networks boil.

Commentators become experts on other people’s intimacy.

And the question that should have been asked yesterday is forgotten.

This is the Central Bank of Scandals: it does not produce answers. It produces forgetting.

And perhaps this is the most perfect mechanism of our attention economy.

Because to hide a scandal it is not always necessary to deny it.

It is enough to produce another scandal.

To forget a video, release another video.

To dim an investigation, light up a spectacle.

To displace the question, give the public a curiosity.

And so, while everyone looks at the screen, nobody asks anymore:

Who is controlling the Central Bank of Scandals?

Because the governor may be anonymous.

But the monetary policy is clear:

When the public starts to remember too much, issue something that will make it forget.
/TemA