TJ, I lost big heaps of money in the Globalstar failure. I had worked diligently, saved fanatically, invested cautiously and prudently, tried very hard not to be stiffed but lost my money: <china is very far away from the center of blame, just doing its systemic reform, working diligently, saving, investing, and trying not to be stiffed>
It didn't occur to me to blame the USA government, or our great and estimable venerable idol Alan Greenspan KBE, nor the China government, nor the people in China working diligently and saving who provided funds for me to borrow. It didn't even occur to me that the US$ I borrowed might have been loaned by somebody in China.
While Globalstar management decisions were the proximate cause of the business failure, it was my decision and mine alone to borrow and buy, even though I had spent a lot of time to investigate the company and people running it and had misgivings about their marketing decisions. The share price had collapsed so far from the peak of $53 to $13 [my buy price] that I didn't want to be greedy and wait for a lower price lest I miss out as they changed their marketing ideas and things came right. They did NOT change their ideas. They carried on down to zero.
It didn't occur to me that Congress should do some tarping and give me a load of loot, nor that Alan Greenspan should do some quantitative easing and refill my coffers. Nor that I should feel malign to my creditors who were repaid in full. I did join a class action suit against Bernie Schwartz who had misled investors by asserting that the company was "on plan" when in fact it was not, because the undisclosed reality of sales was leading directly to bankruptcy. Boosting confidence is good, deceit is bad.
After the sharemarket bubble, people then went on to create an enormous real estate bubble: "I am a Mindless Zombie" here: Subject 53236 <Feel free to whine here about how your Mindless Zombie brain was paralyzed, had a hole in it or something and it's all Uncle Al's fault, and that's why you lost your money. You have not heard of free will. You didn't have a clue what were doing. You didn't know you could short Bubblonia. You couldn't just hold cash [although Microsoft and a lot of others who are notably intelligent didn't seem to have a problem with it]. >
Now they are whining and tarping and quantitatively easing and blaming creditors in China and workers who are working for low pay to buy some food to eat. It's pathetic.
I don't even blame the management of Globalstar for my loss because it was me who decided that while they were not the El Supreme people who would make a huge success, I thought they would see the error of their ways and fix their marketing. The error in judgment was mine. I failed as an investor. It's fun to feel under control and not at the whim of invisible forces. Taking responsibility for one's own decisions is enjoyable [if somewhat arrogant].
So the house buyer should blame themselves for borrowing to pay such an obviously absurdly high price without having a means of repaying the loan and without needing such a huge house to live in. The mortgagees should blame themselves for lending to such an obviously indigent, impecunious, dishonest, misanthrope. Congressors should blame themselves for voting to require Fannie and Freddie to lend like there's no tomorrow which there might not be thanks to their decisions. People in China should blame themselves for thinking that if they work really hard for low pay and save hordes of hoards of US$ they will be repaid for their efforts. People in China should have asked themselves "Will a nation of morbidly obese people addicted to various drugs work hard to return the favour I have done of working hard to provide goods to them in exchange for those US$ I have in the bank? Especially when they have the power to repudiate the debt by way of self-dealing quantitative easing aka money printing like Zimbabwe." It is not a sure bet that they will trim down and get back to work. So the US$ continues down the gurgler and gold continues towards the 31 December 2010 price of $1,400 per ounce as predicted by Mqurice the Marvelous 2 years ago using financial relativity theory.
Mqurice |
