TheCow: "Where's Dr. Zax or TunicaA?" Right here Cow. Studying the market. Looking into the future. The patient/market is currently lying on a sofa undergoing psychoanalysis. He(she?) is torn by various cross currents.
Deep thinking needed.
TA
Perhaps Einstein's brain might have helped to help us dispose of cash properly:
Barron's On-Line
June 28, 1999
Head Hunting
By Alan Abelson
Groovy.
Or, perhaps, clefty would be more apropos. The latest discovery about
Einstein's brain, we mean.
According to a team of Canadian researchers who have been poking around
the remains of Albert's gray matter seeking a clue as to what made him so
smart, Einstein's is definitely not your everyday brain. On the contrary, it's
quite distinctive. To wit:
The Sylvan fissure, a prominent cleft, follows a highly unusual route around --
rather than, as with us clucks, through -- his inferior parietal lobes, which is
where mathematical and spatial reasoning reside. Not only are Albert's lobes,
in contrast to run-of-the-brainpan lobes, unfurrowed, but they're big. So if
you want your kid to grow up to be a mathematical genius, endow him with a
decent pair of parietal lobes and make sure his Sylvan fissure takes a proper
detour.
These fascinating findings got us to wondering what comparable revelations
are in the neuroscientific pipeline. Quite a few, we discovered, after
exhaustive research.
Donald Trump's brain, it has been authoritatively
established, has no Sylvan fissure; instead, it has
an Urban fissure, which is gradually being filled in
to form the foundation of a very expensive condominium bearing his name.
Jeb Bush's brain most emphatically does have a Sylvan fissure, but it's stuffed
with small items of contraband sequestered there by his wife on her return
from trips abroad; his parietal lobes, incidentally, are bedecked with earrings
that have successfully eluded Customs' notice.
Hillary Clinton's Sylvan fissure has been painstakingly reconfigured by brain
surgery to simulate the Hudson Valley, a procedure, White House lawyers
have assured her, sufficient to establish legal residency in New York State.
We were particularly eager to learn how research into the generic investor's
brain was progressing. As it happens, so far that research has proved more
frustrating than fruitful. The problem is twofold. To begin with, it turns out
there's no such thing as a generic investor; so researchers grouped investors
into two broad categories: professional (investment bankers, money
managers, analysts, dealers, etc.) and civilians (401[k]ers, day traders and
other just plain folks).
The professional investors, in turn, presented an unexpected and daunting
difficulty -- that of locating their brains -- so the scientific work could begin.
The researchers charitably conjectured that the trouble could be that their
instruments were simply not sensitive enough to pinpoint so small an object. In
any case, they offer this reassuring observation: The apparent absence of
brains is no impediment to successful job performance.
Probing the vast remaining segment of the investor population -- the civilians
-- has run afoul of a completely different kind of snag. In studying their
subjects, the researchers became increasingly fascinated by the nature of their
activity. Quietly but inexorably, they abandoned their microscopes and
calipers, plugged into the Internet and, yes, became fully addicted day traders.
If only so these dedicated men and women can be freed of their obsession
and their critical work can once again go forward, the stock market badly
needs a break. Off last week's performance, the market seems more than
ready to oblige.
What rattled the market most was, of course, Alan Greenspan's recent
pre-emptive disclosure of a pre-emptive rate increase. Aware that the specter
of higher rates might spook investors, Mr. Greenspan generously sought to
calm any disquiet out in the real world by observing that even were the
unthinkable to happen -- that is, the stock market were to suffer a significant
setback -- it did not necessarily follow that the economy would follow suit. By
way of evidence, he cited 1987, when the Crash had zilch effect.
Nice try, but the comparison doesn't hold. There's a world of difference
between 1987 and 1999, and what's essentially different is that, in the years
between, the stock market has gone bonkers and taken the public with it.
Never before in the history of the Republic have equities occupied so
pervasive and penetrating a role in the hearts, minds and finances of its
citizens.
The smart guys at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, the global brokerage outfit
headquartered on the other side of the pond, in their latest commentary list
some eye-opening data pointing up how important stocks have become in the
average American household. You'll find the facts and figures laid out neatly in
that table nestling at the bottom of these columns.
In the years since the Crash of '87, equities as a slice of Jane and John's total
assets have swelled by a formidable 250% and now constitute over 35% of
total household financial assets, up from 17% a decade ago.
Believe us -- if we get another '87, or anything even close, the economy will
feel the fallout and in big doses.
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