ParisTampaBlog

Eric, I'll reply this time referring directly to some of the things you say in your email.

To start, you say:

"One third of your retirement money… that money is now in the pocket of the thieves. Or transformed into wind."

No, neither, not with the thieves nor is it "gone with the wind." (Did you ever see the movie of that name? You must have, and it must have been a favorite of yours. It goes along with the "big pictures" of things you like.)

That loss, which includes our loss, represents the people's (those with the monetary means anyway) loss of confidence in one another. So from that point of view true wealth is having confidence. Wealth vanishes along with our confidence in one another. Therefore, even in my monetary loss I try to retain confidence, and to the extent I do I'm still wealthy. Do you believe it? (Well, if you do, as the expression goes, I have a bridge I'll sell you. That expression refers to naive newcomers to NYC buying the Brooklyn bridge from city dwellers for cash.)

"I interviewed some traders of BNP Asset Management; in spite of colossal losses, they keep all their arrogance. They looked at me and my friend as at snails which can never understand anything about the fabulous risk markets."

I admire your courageous attempt to understand risk and the BNP management people. I wouldn't even try. That's one more subject matter that is far beyond my ability to comprehend. But I do learn from an article in today's Wall Street Journal, Capitulation: "When the Market Throws in the Towel" (Do you read the WSJ?) that I'm not alone in my inability to understand. I read:

"Wall Street often resembles a blindfolded person looking in a darkened
closet for a pair of black shoes that isn't there. With the Dow taking
another battering in the past week, another round of futility is under
way: the search for "capitulation."

Eric, as I'm sure you know stocks have only gone up over time, up and down but always more up,

Here's a portion of the chart, from 1986 to the present, that proves it (go to this internet site to see the complete chart):

 

The overall upward movement is a fact, maybe not like the sun coming up in the morning, but almost. That is so because there is always more production, more growth, which the stocks have to reflect. And there has to be more production in order to fill the stomachs (and desires) of more and more people. The confidence I have in America (the USA) comes most of all from the huge numbers of people who come here every year from nearly all the countries of the world. Our productive capacity, our businesses, our stocks, have to grow if only for them. (And they have to eat, even while working on the plantation.)

If there is one country that is ever going to represent the whole world it will have to be America where more and more people from all the world are now living. I see it right here in Tampa, at least in terms of the Blacks, Latinos, Whites et al. that make up the colorful population of this city.

I love this city for that reason. There are all kinds of people here, people I encounter every day as I ride my bicycle throughout the grid of streets (lined mostly by magnificent live oaks and ordinary strip malls) that is the city, the very rich and the very poor, people of color and people supposedly all white (of course they're not).

While some fear the devastation of the planet from overpopulation I see more and more people as being the source of more and more wealth, and even, and this is the paradox so hard for many to understand and accept, the source of more and more efforts to protect the planet. For only wealth enables people to care for their physical environment. Otherwise they will use it for their own purposes, as during the move West of our pioneers, and as today in the banlieux of France's cities where poverty and joblessness force people, by and large young people, to have only thing on their minds, how to grow their own monetary wealth.

"But my instinct says to me: this is a new chapter in the big story of humanity: the game is going to become less funny. Like in the Heart of Darkness of Joseph Conrad."

No, I don't think so. Comedy is still what most "contains" the world, what most is the world. Whatever else you might say about the present what is happening is not tragedy. At most there is fear, and incomprehension, but no sense of tragic loss.

Why in some ways these happenings make me feel even more alive. I have lost nothing yet of great value. The people I love are still with me, and we can be together (much as the Soviets about their thousands of kitchen tables during the Empire) and talk about what is happening, and yes, as you and I, you in the Luxembourg Garden in Paris and I here in Tampa, this most American of cities, we can laugh at the folly of it all.

No Kurtz with his mumblings here to disturb us. Just a lot of clowns, but also as I learn every day some reasonable men and women writing for one or more of the Web puclications and whom we read with great pleasure. Just as it's good to read you, and your take on what's happening.

"The Mafia’s hedge fund holds 20 % of the world's wealth now. This is the synthesis of the figures of numerous governments, US universities, offices of strategic analysis on the evolution of the balance of power between states, multinational firms, and even criminal organizations. In the 50's this percent was much lower, perhaps 2-3. I don’t know what all that means because I do not control these figures…"

If what you say about the Mafia is true why that's a good thing. The best way to end thievery (and terrorism) is to make sure that the thieves (and the terrorists) have their own stake in society, their own wealth that they too want to defend. I'm much more afraid of those with nothing to lose, the suicide bomber for example, the al qaeda cell without a country of its own.

" …statuts des preuves qui ont contribué à les élaborer, mais je pressens qu’à l’ère de la monnaie virtuelle, où les capitaux peuvent changer de mains en un millième de seconde, les particuliers comme vous et moi sont des pigeons tout juste bons à plumer. And the figures which you mention at the end of your message are really beautiful. Ils représentent la preuve que le vol existe à une échelle inconnue. Vol des capitaux au sens propre (comme un oiseau vole d’un continent à l’autre) et au sens de dépouiller les épargnants.
Ici, en France, c’est absolument merveilleux ce qu’on voit en ce moment. Le gouvernement vient d’autoriser les banques qui ont été renflouées par l’argent des contribuables après des menaces de faillites (ou des faillites réelles) à puiser dans les livrets de caisses d’épargne. C’est fabuleux ! Le vol est devenu légal !!! Great move in chess game!!! On privatise les gains et on nationalise les pertes!!!!! We are singers delighted to sing and grateful that the bandits leave us alive for the next game."

Here with all due respect I lose you. I've never seen myself as a victim. I've made plenty of mistakes, and my real losses have always come more from my own mistakes than from the machinations of evil people. Eric, I don't believe in evil. Selfishness, egoism, insensitivity to others, and the other "sinful" behaviors, yes, but not evil.

Evil is not one of the deadly sins. There are not evil people, only weak and stupid people, a lot of them, who mess things up, as our President and other such of our world's leaders. But I don't see what's happening now as being the work of the Mafia, of thieves, of evil individuals out there trying to strip us of what we have.

No, what's happening is the result of our own mistakes, compounded now by our fears, and our unwillingness to trust our fellows. OK, lack of trust is perhaps as close to being an evil as it gets. As for the government of France I'm not able to judge their actions, no more than the moves of a great chess player (I'm not comparing government leaders to chess players, other than in respect to my own inability to understand their actions!)

"Pour terminer, convenons que nous ne savons pas grand chose de la vérité de ce qui se passe actuellement sur les parquets des salles de marchés, dans les câbles qui relient les ordinateurs des brokers aux banques, dans les cerveaux des gens qui décident de couper leurs positions lorsque les indices atteignent tel ou tel plancher, mais… quel spectacle. Même si les gens qui devaient me donner de l’argent pour fabriquer ma saga littéraire se désistent en ce moment, je ne voudrais manquer le show pour rien au monde. C’est quelque chose de voir les hors-la-loi s’empoigner les uns les autres, se tirer dessus par derrière, le shérif embusqué derrière le traditionnel tonneau de whisky, son chapeau troué par des balles qui ne lui étaient pas destinées, et derrière lui, dans le saloon, le pianiste qui continuer de jouer The Mapple Leaf Rag of Scott Joplin."

I'm a great fan of Westerns. One of the great achievements of America is, I believe, the Western film. So I'm with you here, with your final image of the saloon, one of my very favorite cinematic places. Maybe someday you'll be here with us in Tampa and while we count our newly refound wealth, as the market again rises, you'll be here with us, perhaps, playing Joplin's rags for us in the background. That would be excellent.

Now I need a big drink but it's morning, and I have to wait until evening for others to join me with a bottle.

OP

Explore posts in the same categories: Idle Thoughts

This entry was posted on October 25, 2008 at 9:38 am and is filed under Idle Thoughts. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.