Capitalism views the marketplace as an intersection where buyer and seller meet. It fails to consider the robber, who’s already there, lurking in the bushes.
That’s why economists keep getting everything wrong.
The criminal mind is totally unaccounted for. From Adam Smith through George WTF Bush, the great free market deciders of History missed the whole fleecing point. Money begets crooks. The bigger the profit, the bigger the profiteer. And by passing the wealth of nations through a small number of identifiable hands at announced times in specified locations, capitalism optimizes the last remaining larcenous ingredient, opportunity, turning the Greed Lust From Hell that markets spawn into Serial Financial Crime Spree of the Century after Serial Financial Crime Spree of the Century.
Nobody gets it in the Dismal Science. Nobody gets it at all.
But we have Arthur Conan Doyle to blame as well. Had the creator of Sherlock Holmes recognized where all the real offenders were, the New York Stock Exchange would be trading inside Police Headquarters today, where it belongs, supervised by burly Irish-Americans with Billy clubs instead of an SEC and its hapless staff of unprofessionals.
Besides, with Conan Doyle afoot, John Maynard Keynes keeps his fool mouth shut, and we’re hanging onto our savings that much longer.
In his 1934 doctoral thesis, Laissez Faivre, Chief Economist at Filch & Finagle, came up with a landmark hypothesis all but proving that pi had nothing to do with circles. Or geometry even. Pi related to the short-term public trader. The little guy doing business with one of the Wall Street Crime Families.
If such a mark makes 22 trades, profiting on only 7 of them, for every $12.50 of capital loss or gain he records, on average, the bloodsucking thief dancing with him rakes in $100 of the sucker‘s starting capital. Should our little guy bring a $1,000 wad to the table, our wise guy pockets it all after 220 total trades. Marks netting more than $12.50 per dance per $1,000 lose their bundles faster.
Pi is 22 divided by 7, or 3.14 and change, and doesn’t mean math shinola compared to what Laissez Faivre came up with. If readers don’t believe him, order some candlestick charts, bone up on your stop loss protections, and phone in 220 orders. See how your life savings does compared with the hypothetical numbers.
Accomplished small investors, on the other hand, keep the same top quality, modest yielding core holdings across generations. It’s ugly paring portfolio income to get in, uglier still hanging on through the occasional train wreck, but bloodsucking thieves make nothing off them. To this day that drives Laissez Faivre crazy bananas.
Economists never let a thing like this get out though. The lot of them have always been paid off by the gangsters.
Little guys help fire the engines of finance. How, never concerned the likes of Laissez Faivre or any of his historical econo-cronies.
We have gamed markets, folks. The only thing free about them is the opportunity racketeers seize to go out and rig the action.
