Roll The Dice

Roll The Dice

After watching the precipitous fluctuations of the world Stock market these last few weeks, one has to wonder what this venerable institution has become. I was always taught that it was a free mercantile trading center for the raising of financial capital, so that businesses could finance their expansions in the classic capitalist mode. Naturally, those whose business acumen could predict major market swings would be rewarded for their insights. There existed a rational basis of price earnings ratios, credit reports and a history of dividend issuance that gave companies a profile of financial worth upon which investors based their investments.

Now, I begin to see the true nature of the market. It doesn’t so much resemble the excited mania of a Las Vegas gambling casino, but rather the controlled frenzy of a large crap game held on streets in any large city. Intrinsic worth, price earnings ratios, dividend projections are considerations swept aside by an army of degenerate gamblers bent on making a financial killing in a single afternoon. Billions of dollars are tossed around like match sticks, as the gambling mania sweeps over the once staid financial gathering place. I don’t think they have yet installed actual dice pits. No dart boards, with company symbols for selection when a dart strikes it, are kept out in the open. But they might as well be.

How can the world oil situation change so rapidly that this commodity is now worth but half what it was a few month's back? Where does sveral trillion dollars magically disappear to? Someone is kidding somebody and I am afraid as comic strip character Pogo once said “We have met the enemy and they is us.” We are what P.T. Barnum coined as those luckless creatures that are “ born every minute.” Appealing to government leaders is at best futile. They have no apparent control over any of this process and precious little knowledge of how to fix things, except to throw obscene piles of money back into the hands of these degenerate gamblers, encouraging them to bet larger and larger stakes on each spin of the wheel.

Perhaps, we should gather a few dozen billionaires and arab oil sheiks in a room and ask them nicely if they will please fix the situation. I would suspect they have more influence on these financial hurricanes than entire governments elected for that purpose. Cynical? Perhaps. But I have more confidence in the financial manipulators to effect change and get everyone a fair deal than anyone in elected office. The money changers all realize that the rabble has to be kept happy so we can buy more of their products and staff their resorts for the occasional week long company outing with spa treatments, golf and other necessities. In the words of an old Simon and Garfunkel song, “Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio, our nation needs you more than you will know.” Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, the Sultan of Brunei, straighten this out for us, will you, please!

-30-

Joseph Xavier Martin