In the 1949 film “The Third Man,” set in post-war Vienna, the Austrian capital is a bombed-out city where Orson Welles’ character, Harry Lime, makes a killing on the black market for medical supplies. Lime steals military stocks of penicillin, dilutes the antibiotic and sells it to unsuspecting patients who die from the watered-down drug.

Profiting in desperate times is immoral and unjustifiable.

It is also common.

While most people are conscientious, showing strangers compassion, love and selflessness, craven examples abound of certain individuals profiting from the COVID-19 crisis, and others, by hoarding, price gouging or simply leveraging market forces. The $138 bottle of hand sanitizer is the poster child product of this lockdown moment.

Money motivates the unscrupulous and greedy. Power is the other potent aphrodisiac. In its pursuit, power hungry leaders fan the flames of popular fears and exploit nativist anger.

Money and power are a killer combo.

Across the world, from Ankara to Beijing, Caracas to Moscow, powerful (and newly rich) leaders see the current crisis as a way to build themselves an unassailable permanent political role. Case in point? Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán now rules by decree. READ MORE