Pirates in the 21st Century

I was just thinking about the pirates off the coast of Somalia and how a CNN News anchor remarked about them "making easy money" on last nights broadcast. Really? There they are, four pirates holding an American Captain hostage, sitting in a small lifeboat surrounded by the United States Navy 300 miles off the coast of Somalia. They must be wondering how in the world they ever got themselves into this mess to begin with after boarding the freighter and finding its crew self-locked in their cabin with one of their own pirates captured by that same crew. It would look like a Harold Loyd comedy if it weren't so scary.

As the events unfold in the ocean, other pirates were being interviewed with questions like "what is the average time it takes to get your money from the owner of the ship?" The answer; "four months", which is not bad work considering that the average payoffs are somewhere between $900,000 and $3 Million. So now the country is more focused on pirates of the high seas than on the pirates on "Wall Street.