I thought that pirates were fictitious characters like fairies, elves and superheroes. Half asleep while exercising on my elliptical and watching my favorite news show, “Morning Joe”, I thought that maybe I was imagining news reports that American Captain Richard Phillips was captured by Somali pirates and rescued by navy snipers. Pirates and snipers existing in the same time zone in history—this can’t be, I thought to myself. There are only two pirates that I am familiar with and that is Captain Hook, Peter Pan’s, nemesis and Cap’n Crunch who is on the box of my favorite cereal Crunch Berries.

I decided to look up the definition of a pirate from several sources and in a nutshell, I discovered that pirates are robbers and bandits who attack ships and coastal communities who travel by water using ships as their getaway mobiles. While reading these definitions I thought to myself, what is the difference between a pirate and a Wall Street wolf given that they both are thieves? Here are some of the similarities and differences:

Motivation

Wall Street wolves have everything and they want more wealth and material resources. Their primary motivation to steal is greed.
Somali pirates have nothing and they want something. Their primary motivation to steal is survival.

Age & Race

Wall Street wolves are typically middle-aged or older white males. The life expectancy for a Wall Street wolf is approximately 82-years-old.
Somali pirates are young men of color between the ages of 16 and 22. Their life expectancy is approximately 46-years-old.

Lifestyle

The Wall Street wolves wear expensive suits, ties, shoes and watches. They live a life of luxury that includes yachts, caviar and mansions. They are wealthy people with attitudes of entitlement, insatiability and privilege. They prefer to travel by air using their private jets.

The Somali pirates are poor, unkempt, disheveled and dirty. They wear t-shirts and cut-off jeans. They are destitute, desperate and determined to survive at any cost. They prefer to travel on water using their ski jets.

Weapons

Wall Street wolves are typically educated, refined men who learned how to steal from their countries at their best universities. They look for loopholes in the law; solicit lobbyist; negotiate contracts to their advantage; put the most damaging details in fine print; lure buyers then inflate interest rates; and their deadliest weapon of all is the fountain pen they use to stick up the poor, naïve and unsuspecting consumers when they sign the contract on the dotted line. They are stealth and cunning when robbing their victims and rarely, if ever a victim is visibly harmed.

Somali pirates use automatic hand guns, grenades, rockets, ransoms and kidnapping to rob their victims. They are typically uneducated and come from a country with a failed government, lawlessness, violence and extreme poverty. Many of their captives stated that while awaiting their ransoms to be paid, they were treated well and physically unharmed.

Somali pirates and Wall Street wolves are both thieves on the opposite ends of the wealth spectrum who prey on innocent people. The pirates are stealing because they feel hopeless and their souls are crying out to the world for help to acknowledge their plight of hunger and devastation. The wolves steal because their lives are empty, cold and meaningless and their hearts are detached from the pulse of human compassion and the richness of giving.