Labrador: Waiting for the much-ballyhooed "capitulation" is like waiting for Godot. He ain't coming. He's dead.
The institutional fund managers on Wall Street are continually claiming someone else should bail out the market -- Greenspan who won't cut rates inter-meeting, Bush and Congress who won't cut taxes this very minute, that mythical retail investor who won't 'capitulate' in the next hour, the CEOs of public companies who won't spoon feed them future profit projections, the "consumer" who won't tell "sentiment surveyors" he's lost all hope, even other fund managers with huge sums on the sidelines who won't break the ice, dammit, and show them where they should put their money, etc. etc.
The truth of it is, the real culprits behind this market implosion are the fund managers themselves. There are more than 3,500 mutual funds, 1,000 privately managed hedge funds, and countless other investment banks, institutions and professional capital formation groups who control upwards of $15 trillion in investment money. Of them, fewer than 40 or so control over a third of the total value of all equity exchanges. They are in control of stock prices, not the hapless retail investor or the much-reviled day trader.
As Walt Kelly's Pogo might have put it, "Wall Street has met the enemy and it is Wall Street." |
