Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
There’s Gold In That Thar Earthquake
There's always some schmuck who will profit from disaster.By Bob Wire, 3-14-11
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Thousands killed in Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Hundreds of bodies wash up on shore as water recedes. Hundreds more trapped in earthquake rubble and tsunami debris, entire cities destroyed, a nation in shock. Yeah, but HOW’S THE STOCK MARKET?
The Japanese stock market fell five percent shortly after Monday’s opening. The Bank of Japan moved quickly, dumping 12 trillion yen (1,742,060,000,000 Mexican pesos) into the money market to try and achieve stability. Sound familiar? At least their government is reacting to a natural disaster, not the reckless behavior of a bunch of luxury-addicted Wall Street speculators.
Investors and unemployed slackers--I mean, day traders--throughout the U.S. absorbed the news and developments over the weekend, and took action immediately by launching millions of internet searches to try and discover how they can possibly make some money off these twin tragedies.
“As to Friday’s earthquake and tsunami and the current situation of the power plants in Fukushima, in the 65 years after the end of World War II, this is the toughest and the most difficult crisis for Japan in that period,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said in a televised address on Sunday. Did you get that? The worst crisis for Japan since World War II, when we flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic bomb. This is heavy shit.
The death toll, according to Japanese officials, will likely top 10,000. That’s three times as many Americans killed in the 9/11 attacks. The devastation and tragedy of the tsunami cannot be overstated. And this is a highly advanced nation we’re talking about, the world’s third-largest economy, not a bunch of yurt-dwelling bug eaters in some global backwater. And yet the biggest headlines this Monday morning announce the 6.2 percent drop in the Nekkei 225 Stock Average.
“Our view of Japan is still the same,” said David Herro, chief investment officer of International Equities at Harris Associates in Chicago, in a story in Bloomberg Businessweek. “We’re still excited about the Japanese equity market.” Well, I’m so glad you’re still excited, David! Wow, if those nuclear plants go into full meltdown, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to pounce on Tokyo Electric when it bottoms out. So what’s a few hundred deaths from radiation poisoning if it will fatten your quarterly statement?
It’s human nature to profit off someone else’s misfortune. Taking satisfaction from the suffering of others. The Germans call it schadenfreude. I call it day trading. In this moment in history when our thoughts and efforts should be concentrated toward assisting our fellow humans across the Pacific, millions of Americans are squealing with glee over the investment opportunities provided by these terrible acts of nature. I suppose it’s just a matter of time before Hank Jr. or Toby Keith writes a song about it.
Day traders (code for unemployed parasites with no discernible talents or skills) spend untold hours slavering over their laptops, pulling profits out of thin air as they buy stocks and futures on margin (which means gambling way more money than they actually have), hoping to show a profit by the end of the trading day. I know people who have made millions doing this (and then lost it). It takes a lot of research, nerves of steel, and intense focus. What it doesn’t take is any tangible contribution to society from the trader. Day traders bring nothing to the table; online investing simply allows a certain sector of financial remoras to slurp tidbits of money off the always-swimming Great White Stock Market. It’s a form of capitalism, I guess, but it’s also an opportunistic and parasitic way of obtaining money.
The day traders’ host organism, Wall Street, is the fattest shark in the water. When the Japanese stock market predictably dropped a few points on the first full business day after the tsunami/earthquake disasters, all eyes were on the NYSE. No one was surprised; the Japanese market’s hiccup followed a natural trend. It seemed callous to me that the Nekkei didn’t close down for at least a day after the tsunami, but like Gordon Gekko said, money never sleeps, pal.
The stock market functions as a litmus test of consumer and investor confidence in the businesses being publicly traded, and the very idea that a company’s “worth” is determined by the actions of investors gives the market way more power than it should have. I don’t claim to understand the ins and outs of the financial world (I’m the guy who tends to draw to the inside straight), but my ignorance is matched by my disgust at the craven greed that asserts itself so nakedly when disaster strikes.
The sheer avarice that is the lifeblood of our nation will ensure that the NYSE and NASDAQ will see but a minor blip from the events in Japan. Investors will quickly identify the stocks and commodities they can exploit from Japan’s tragedy, and many will make a swift and tidy sum by simply making some clever moves in their portfolio. The images of utter destruction, hundreds of bodies floating in the advancing flood, the grief-stricken survivors in shock over losing their homes and their families will never enter their minds as they raise an ironic cup of sake to toast their ability to capitalize on the financial fallout from Japan.
So many bodies are piling up that officials have run out of body bags. Hello, investment opportunity! Instead of finding someone who’s upside-down on their mortgage and buying their home in a short sale, you might be able to make a killing by simply investing in commercial grade Chinese vinyl. And think of the paperwork you’ll save!
Here’s a suggestion: if you’re an investor or day trader or some other kind of market playa, why not don a strap-on conscience and use your shrewd investment knowledge to create some funds that can be used to help mitigate the suffering in Japan? Do that voodoo that you do to pull money out of thin air, and put it towards a humanitarian effort. Hey, it might even feel good. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s tax-deductible.
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Comments
Somewhere cotton didn't grow last year, and so US cotton farmers got the highest prices for cotton ever. By double. Libya goes to revolution and Europe has many refineries built to use Libyan crude only. They also have the long memory of Islamic occupation of southern Europe for 700 years. Libyans remember the cruelty and malice of Italian occupation. It might not be "fair" but don't expect a "no fly" zone, or NATO help for unknown muslim revolutionaries. Europe needs someone in charge of Libya who knows how to produce, sell and ship oil. And oil is over $100 a barrel. You know who is going to prevail and you know there is nothing about the conclusion to like. Either way.
There is a worry that farm land prices in the midwest are too high due to soybean and corn prices being high. Maybe there is a "bubble" for farmland debt about to pop. Japan has yet to recover from their real estate bubble popping. You wonder if their government has the borrowing power to assist a recovery.
A trader can only make money when there is movement in the market. A trader makes money when the market falls, and when the market rises. They make little when the market is stable. Commodity trader, stock trader, hedge fund trader, day trader. They only can profit with movement in the market. And without traders, how can you have a market for capital??
The real eye opener for the talking heads of US news purveyors in Japan, is that there is no whining, no entitlement demands, no crush of humanity for food, water, and shelter. The whole of the deal is organized, lined up, people wait patiently and for the most part, everyone gets something. And many lost all they had in the world. No riots. No looting. No political demonstrations. A quiet determination to prevail and get on with clean up and rebuilding. The benefit of little diversity, I guess. 600,000 Koreans, 25,000 Ainu, and the rest Japanese. A cohesive society that has faced bad times before with respect and dignity, and even with the disappointment of sure protections from tsunamis and flooding having failed completely, will someday have only a memory of the "big one."
The lesson we in the US should take from the Japanese experience is that two decades of "stimulus" spending on tsunami protections, flood protections, did little in the end to blunt this one. 9.0 on the Richter is a monster number. Instead, the talking heads here are worried about radiation and will it come to the US. Probably not as much coming this way as the "downwinders" got at Moses Lake, Spokane, or St. George, Utah, on a regular basis, from the US Govt.
And, the cynic in me hopes the Canadians can fire up some more sawmills and more logging to help Japan rebuild. I know by the time all the eco-obseesives in the US are placated, the Japanese will have grown the timber to rebuild. Tough to appreciate the scope and extent of a disaster across the sea when you are as egocentric as the average American. The down side of diversity. I wish the Japanese well and hope that we can help them in some way.
This beyond three novas, Yes this is YHWH, The Supreme Author, led disaster, controlled & directed by the 'Arcangels of the Highest Heaven, ninth mansion!
The inner earth bring much illuminating fire, yet to come.
How Great the Power of the Creator
Melchizedekian Missionary
Abbot R.H. Bain OM DD TO
The stock markets are the worlds greatest information-trading mechanisms. Any new piece of information is rapidly disseminated and acted upon by at least some agents, whose activity effectively signals other agents whose activity signals others... etc. So the reason people constantly look to stock markets is because if there was any critical societal risk posed by this Japanese crisis, like say the reactor totally went Chernobyl on us and started killing and infecting hundreds of thousands with cancerous electromagnetic radiation, markets around the world would be in upheaval. Not only would the market strongly signal this, but there are a multitude of grave consequences associated with such an event.
You obviously think yourself so much higher than the "unemployed" and "lazy" whom you deride, but this just signals how totally in the dark and stupid you really are. Unless you are a homeless invalid who writes these inane musings in the sand with broken pieces of glass, you are not above the financial markets. When important markets start tumbling, credit gets tight. Nobody wants to lend their banking brother a buck. If the big multinationals can't squeeze a dime of credit from Goldman Sachs, what in the world would make you think you could get a loan for school (student loans are largely private now), home, car, or even to swipe your card to get that lunch at Taco Bell? You might think that is preposterous that the economy gets so bad you can't even swipe a piece of plastic to get a $2 piece of crap beef taco, but if the bailouts hadn't happened that is exactly the situation we would have been looking at.
You are ignorant, possibly stupid. You are just as big a piece in the financial markets as day traders. The only difference is that you are a gibbering slob who bought a computer instead of investing long in gold and making actual money.
Allow me to present you a contrary view to your little workers paradise. You are the bottom-feeding slug, who wastes money on idiotic and trivial things like iPods, bottled water, and leftist magazine subscriptions. If you were so smart, so infinitely wise in your backhanded and emotional critique; you would have taken that iPod money and put it into a long investment on gold, where you would have received a tenfold return as the economy returns to growth-mode. By your illogic, that would make you an unemployed asshole though!
I hate to break it to you, but you appear to have already conquered that achievement.
No matter, I am sure this is just pent-up rage from serving successful people coffee every morning at your shitty minimum-wage McDonalds job, even though it's the day traders who provide the credit to keep your lazy ass employed.
I hate Ayn Rand more than any writer who has ever lived. However, if I saw you spewing this shit on the street, I would bludgeon you to death with a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Regard
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