Sadly, investors did, I guess, the prudent thing to do today, viewing the long range, capitolist goal. I thought, for a fleeting moment, I thought, that investors would not punish the companies who were hapless victims of the tragedy. I thought, as Don Quixote might have, that people would just throw caution to the wind, if just for a day, and stand by their American brothers at GE, CNA, AIG, etc.

But no. The dollar still rules the day. No amount of human indignity can stop traders from doing the "right thing" for their clients. They behaved today as a robot might behave given the data of the current economy and last weeks events, against the backdrop of history.

But still I thought, I hoped, that there would be strong buying in the market to make a show to the world that we support America.

But the response was logical. The response was to be expected. Idealism be damned. I can say that I bought American today and bought some new stock. So far today it has not fared badly. Hmmmmmmm.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), September 17, 2001

Answers

Why yes, as always the dollar did rule the day. But what makes anyone think that it was purely American’s that were trading today?

-- World (wide@stock.biz), September 17, 2001.

Tuesday Morning, after watching on my neighbor's television the immediate aftermath of the assault on WTC & Pentagon for about an hour, I walked downtown to the local brew pub. This was roundabout 11:30am. Needed a steam beer. Needed to be around people. Needed access to multiple televisions. Arround 12:30pm two suits walked in. The beertender knew them, greeted them as a fisherman talks to a well stocked lake just before his first cast.

The two gents seated themselves next to me and began emptying their pockets. Cell phone. Another cell phone. Pager. Another cell phone. One guy demanded the business news on CNBC be shown on the main television. (My assumption they have a history as good tippers,) the beertender complied.

The two men shook off general conversation about the tragedy in NY and DC. Instead, they huddled together. They wrung their hands and pleaded to each other for the NYSE to open quickly. They checked their pagers. They checked their cell phones. They wrung their hands some more.

The eyes of these men glowed. There was no fire in their eyes for the thousands who lay in pieces under the mountain of rubble in Lower Manhattan. The glow was fired by greed. Their eyes glowed dollar signs.

I spent a good 45 minutes sitting at the bar with these two guys and it was as if they were enveloped in a force field which isolated them from everyone and everything going on around them, around the world, all of which poured into the rest of us from half a dozen television sets spread around the establishment. I picked up my steam beer, grettes, asked the beertender for the house darts, and moved far away from those two men. Being in their presence I was soiled.

I expected the market to tumble today, FS. As impressed as I am with the pulling together of people I've witnessed the past six days, I was sure as shit short term profit/loss would rule today, as it does every day on Wall Street. It's what they do.

-- Rich (living_in_interesting_times@hotmail.com), September 17, 2001.

And folks wonder why I am unsure that the US has the guts to stick with an eight to ten year battle against terrorists.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), September 17, 2001.

FutureShock,
The following may be worth considering in deciding how strongly investors should be criticized:

1. Traders who were doing right by their clients, were also fulfilling obligations to their own families to put food on the table.

2. The private sector has become hyperextended on credit, and believing that the stock market would go up forever, has poured funds into it which it cannot afford to lose or to even have substantially eroded.

I admire your sentiment and your having acted on it. But the vast majority of households are in too tight a financial bind to be able to follow suit, even if they wanted to.

Rich,
Those two subhumans must have turned your stomach. A desire to throw darts was more than understandable.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), September 17, 2001.

David,

Well, this is one time I'll break ranks with conservatives. I was VERY disheartened today. It seems that all the day traders and stock gamblers put their pockets ahead of their country. There's no other way to put it.

I can understand some people selling off (yes, there were few who really had no choice -- say, an elderly couple getting ready to retire). I expected the market to decline a bit ... but nothing like it did.

We've sent a clear message to terrorists that they can destroy our economy because our investors have no spine.

This thing from the brokerage firms about, having "a fiduciary responsibility to our clients" only holds water so far. The SAME PEOPLE who say this also say things like, "stay in the market, you make money over the long term."

I guess they expect little guys (like that elderly couple I just mentioned) to do as they SAY and not as they DO.

I realize that there were profits to be taken today ("shorting" transportation stocks, for one) but just once, couldn't the little neener neeners with their Yuppie Phones and pagers put the long term interests of the nation ahead of quick profits?

The real irony is that a Saudi Arabian prince may have been more "patriotic" than many Americans (see the little video sidebar about 2/3 of the way down on the page).

I'll have more to say on this later. Nuff for now.

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), September 17, 2001.

I try always to give people the benefit of the doubt, David. Who knows what has transpired in anyone's life prior to meeting them on the street or in a tavern or at the counter at Burger King. Ya know?

-- Rich (living_in_interesting_times@hotmail.com), September 17, 2001.

Gentlemen,

It's not as simple as being patriotic or not being patriotic. As "World" pointed out, there are many non-Americans who trade in our markets, as well.

Also, a scary little phrase known as "margin call" can have an interesting effect on an "investor".

If it is any solace to you, a few different stocks that I glanced at opened on their lows for the day, proving that, for the time being anyway, selling today at the open was not the right thing to do.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), September 18, 2001.

FS,

On the up side of the market today, the DJIA really only dropped 7.13%, which is LESS than the anticipated of 8-12% which CNNfi had predicted. So perhaps you can find a little hope in those numbers. I know I did.

I too bought American today, with hope in my heart for America's future. It is what we American's do best you know, look on the bright side. We have a history of being challenged and our strength of purpose has always endured. Believe it will again, because history has shown us this holds true. I feel, and know in my gut, that we as a nation will be stronger for this horrid tragedy we have all suffered through in the last week.

There are no adjectives to adequately describe what each of us, from our own perspective, has experienced these last agonizing days. Words seem no inadequate, when only tears over the loss of humanity stream down our collective faces only to be replaced by more tears. And the understanding never comes, but the fear of more attacks is ever present on the the precipice of your only too newly alerted consciousness. We all want to fight back, to express that angry part of us that feels like our personal lives were invaded upon, because in truth, they were. However turning that anger into something constructive is the difficult thing in the days, and months ahead.

My sense tells me to turn to those we know and love, and let them know we are there for them, should there be anything they need. To take the negative, and turn it into a positive can be our only healing. Please know that my healing, positive thoughts are coming in your direction, to you and yours. The healing is up to us. May the white light surround you in the days to come friend. This is a hope I hold for all of America, and pray I see the day it is so.

-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), September 18, 2001.

There is a story afloat that certain middle-easterners sold short on Monday. They made a "killing". Apparently Bin Laden not only hates us but he is not above making a buck off our blood. That Osama is a real market mover!

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 18, 2001.

Rich, I agree. My comment should have been about their actions rather than about "them."

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), September 18, 2001.

A few thoughts:

1)- The old cliche that "markets are driven by fear and greed" is true, as are many old cliches. Yesterday, fear was driving. A market, any market, is an exercise in group psychology. It's impossible for an individual to prevail against a mania or a panic.

2)- For every share sold, there was a share purchased. Different opinions, that's what makes a market. FS and AB, you may have made some good buys yesterday. If the market goes up, does that make you profiteers?

3)-Fund managers have no choice but to dump shares if individual fund owners want to cash-in. The funds don't sit around with cash reserves equal to the fund's market value. If guarranteed face value is what you want, buy T Bills. Even T Bills don't guarrantee purchasing value, only face-value.

4)-People work for money. I'm sure that is true for all of us. There is nothing wrong with that. IMO, commerce is good. Have any of you quit your jobs to show solidarity with the dead? Would that be helpful?

5)-If you are fortunate enough to have money, and feel guity about it, donate some of that money (hey, donate all of that money) to any legitemate relief organizations. Be careful of scams.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 18, 2001.

Just thought I'd toss in this classic little firecracker and stand back...:)

The Root of Money

(excerpt from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand)

Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil--and he's the typical product of money."

Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor-- your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is MADE--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of GOODS. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the LOVE of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it."

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another- -their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals- by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of DISARMED victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while your damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves-- slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a COUNTRY OF MONEY--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to MAKE money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), September 18, 2001.

Bin Laden's financial empire

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 18, 2001.

Did terrorists short airline stocks?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 18, 2001.

Thanks Eve:

Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time.

I have done this. Never got anything from the men who discovered it.

I had forgotten what a poor writer Ayn Rand was and how muddled her thinking was. You brought that back. I'm sure that it is attractive to certain anti-intellectual types. :<)))

Best wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 18, 2001.

So Z, none of your original thoughts will accrue to the Collective Unconsciousness? None of your scientific research will be of any value to future scientists? Sad.

Ayn was too verbose for sure. But that was not untypical of the writing of her generation. For a Russian, she was rather articulate in English.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 18, 2001.

Lars:

Not directly. Hey, only the fringe groups refer to Darwin when speaking about evolutionary biology. No one references Darwin in the modern literature concerned with evolutionary biology. Same with Watson and Crick in molecular biology.

I'm not concerned. I have a big citation file for recent stuff. Just signed two more agreements with companies. The university is happy. I am just not happy with all of the travel. I want to stay at home and tend my farm [apologies to Voltare].

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 18, 2001.

Z, I think you should retire and raise rare food crops and exotic animals. Maybe open a roadside stand. Maybe market organic specialties on the Internet. Who needs all the hassle?

Z's Folksie Farm! Make a great stop for all the tour busses to Branson.

Get some goats from Helen and include a petting zoo.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 18, 2001.

Suspicious short selling under investigation

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 19, 2001.