branta

by Nayna Chakrabarty

When our great grandmothers would sit down to knit a cardigan, little did they anticipate that their simple loophole stitch would become the greatest legal tool of all time? Spanning across industries ranging from fishing to banking, this one word has an application everywhere we may care to notice it.

The greatness of the first ever roller-coaster was not measured by how great its length was or how fast its riders could travel in it. Indeed, the first great one was the one that had its first loop. Overlap the two ends of a loop, and you get a hole. Thus, a hole therefore makes the loop, whole. The entire sponge industry relies on what its holes hold. Cheesy as it may sound; loopy people are accused of having a hole in their head. Such nutty people may tend to repeat a particular statement or even a song over and over again. Yet, this feature on my music player is aptly called ‘loop’, right next to the shuffle option. Your Malibu mansion and all its finery is protected by a key security device, called a key hole. And what defines the greatest fishing net better than holes stitched together?

Aviation experts recommend all doors of the aircraft be closed while taxiing and flying, yet the security policy permit passengers in distress to jump from mid-air, using parachutes. Thus a loophole in the policy allows passengers to open a hole in the aircraft, to land in one piece, as a whole. For every couple who solemnly swear, in front of their minister in a church or the nearest drive-through chapel, to cherish each other through sickness and health, till death do them apart, have pre-nuptial agreements which allow them to call it quits if they don’t agree on the color of the atrium. Now that’s a loophole to escape a lifetime.

How about cheating death? Try filing a health insurance claim and some get denied based on pre-existing conditions not disclosed while applying for health care. That loophole denies you reimbursement of expenses, in response to which the medical bill burns a hole through your wallet.

When an 85 year old investment bank known worldwide as Bear Stearns, arguably the 5th largest in America, got taken over by another bank JPMorgan Chase, allegedly the second largest bank in America at that point in time, its shareholders were offered $2 a share. At that valuation, a global company was valued at less than $250 million, whereas their corporate head office in Midtown Manhattan, New York city alone was worth over a billion dollars. Now that, to some, since the deal was sanctioned by the Federal Reserve Bank, seemed like the biggest loophole in recorded financial history. Yes, the deal revised later up to nearly $10 a share pacified some, yet that barely covered the hole in many a distressed shareholder’s pocket. If the defense witness solemnly swears to say the whole truth, why does the prosecutor poke holes in his story?

The moral of this whole piece is that no matter which way you look at it, the sum of the pieces is greater than the whole.