what happened to the good old days of stock-broker suicides?

You know, I am not very well versed with the stock market.  My money is mostly in mutual funds, and I hardly have the time to check the market on a regular basis-and them mutual funds make it unneccessary to do so.

But what I do know, is that these days, stock brokers certainly aren’t what they used to be, which is perhaps a bad thing for natural selection.  Yes, those brokers who would perhaps be the most social darwinist of all in our society are in fact undermining their own system.

Back in the good old days of stock market crashes–”black tuesday” for example, at least losers and those who lost heavily in speculation, market manipulation and so on had the good sense to rid the world of their genes by committing suicide out of shame.  What happened to those days?

Today even failed CEOs get compensation packages above and beyond what most Americans could hope to make in a lifetime.  If I had failed college, and then got kicked out of grad school for utter incompetence, and then my parents had made me heir to a vast fortune–perhaps that would be the equivalent of these CEOs, being rewarded for failure–and perhaps, in a sense, the managers of the failing investment banks too–what is it, something like only two American investment banks left?

So, before the waters settle, let’s hope at least a few of these infidels who have so thoroughly screwed up have the good sense to abide by their own rules of social darwinism and let the world off the hook by not passing on their genes any more than they already have.

PS. and what’s the deal with the government using my tax money to bail out poorly run investment firms?  I wish I could be bailed out whenever I made a stupid purchase on my credit card.  Looks like my generation will be paying a lot more taxes–the war and now all these bailouts.  Whatever happened to offering them long-term loans instead?

~ by hmkedar on September 20, 2008.