October Comforts

by wjw on October 29, 2012

So I was annoyed at the way my investments have been declining over the past ten days or so, and it led to the following conversation.

ME: “I’m annoyed at the way my investments have been declining over the past ten days or so.”

INTERLOCUTOR: “Don’t worry about it.  It happens every October.”

ME: “But the papers said the decline had to do with discouraging economic news.”

INTERLOCUTOR: “Naw.  The decline happens every year, and every year people look for a reason and claim to find it, but even if the news were good the decline would still happen.”

ME: “Wow.”

INTERLOCUTOR: “Stocks will rebound later, and they’ll say it was because of ‘unexpectedly robust holiday sales’ or something.”

ME: “It’s sure comforting to know that I’m participating in an economic system that operates with such steely rationality.”

INTERLOCUTOR:  “Yeah.  I’m comforted too.”

Jim Janney October 29, 2012 at 5:17 pm

If you’ve ever been stuck behind a drunk in Las Vegas, there’s a lot of similarity between that and the way the market moves.

The Duck Monkey October 30, 2012 at 1:56 am

And that’s why you Yankee brutes will go down in flames. The very same chaotic, volatile system you created to exploit the innocent, hardworking people of this world into utter squalor will bite you in your oversized asses.

Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind. (Climate change gives this a whole new meaning.)

You’re a pernicious cancer in the fabric of civilization and your demise shall be the remission.

TRX October 31, 2012 at 3:24 pm

Mack Reynolds said something along the line of, “if economists could predict the market even 1% better than random chance, they should be rich.”

> You’re a pernicious cancer in the fabric of civilization and your demise
> shall be the remission.

Do you mind if we take our toys with us when we go? The entire Industrial Revolution, that is, with its benefits of enough food to feed 7 billion people, virtually all progress in medicine since Aesculapius, reality TV, and Tickle Me Elmo dolls?

The Duck Monkey October 31, 2012 at 11:36 pm

Oh, you Yankee barbarians are so droll. Already reverting to revisionism, eh?

Here’s a reality check for you: the Industrial Revolution is a British baby which you perverted into an expression of your intrinsic racism by enslaving all differently-hued through the cotton gin and a tool of degrading Earth’s ability to sustain life as we know it (the British noticed that last one due to the blackened countryside and you didn’t, but what do you expect from the collective, migrated refuse of Europe?); the Haber-Bosch process a German one and modern medicine a European one, but how could savages so evil they hate their own kind so much they deprive certain social strata of primary health care ever comprehend that?

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