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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chispas who wrote (75117)	2/23/2008 11:38:49 AM
From: Chispas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

"Wolves taking us for a ride" . Contra Costa Times, 02/23/2008 Let's stop pretending that Wall Street's unfettered Masters of the Universe play bulls and bears when they evaporate billions of investor dollars and trip the economy into a slow-motion pratfall. The big brutes should have been turned into burgers and rugs decades ago. You could see a bull and a bear more or less evenly matched in a ring, but today's stock market puts an outsized ringer up against a clueless crowd. Wolves and sheep, now there's a real anthropomorphic stock market metaphor. Untamed fang and claw versus domesticated grass munchers, the kind of animal that, fortuitously, we call "stock." What a cautionary moment it would be to see the daily TV report on the Dow, with the smiling claque ringing the closing bell. The announcer would say: "It was a wolf market today, John. The sheep fled in terror and the Dow dropped 600 points, the largest single-day loss since yesterday's 500-point drop. And now this word from our sponsor." (Fade in: Image of howling wolf, fangs bared, rearing up over a sheep's body.) Narrator: Yes! At Bear Steers Stunned, we bite gobbets of profits, taking customers to new heights of wealth! Come into one of our offices today, see how we can send you home stuffed! With wealth! (Fade out: Image of howling wolf, fangs bared, rearing up over a sheep's body.) Wolves, fearsome pack hunters, smart and merciless. Sheep, not-so-smart sedate herd browsers, quietly producing wool and tasty lambs, but liable to panic attacks. Wool and meat. Cloth and food. The very image of productive stability. Our wolves wear $2,000 Armani suits and smack their lips over $500 lunches. Disgraced wolves -- look what you did, you scared the flock again -- know the pack will take care of them with multimillion-dollar farewells on their way to even larger flocks. The Roman emperor Tiberius remarked "It is the part of a good shepherd to shear, not flay, his sheep." We moderns adopted a harsher view. A Doonesbury cartoon once depicted disgraced financier-turned-professor Michael Millken teaching a class to chant: "Greed is good." We'll never hear kindly sheepherder talk from the Decider in the White House. "Hey! Shear, flay, it's all the same to me. Here, take some Band-Aids. Go munch more grass, get fat, say hi to the nice doggies." The wolf-sheep market would quickly revive the old phrase "thrown to the wolves." The D.C. geniuses persuaded us -- without too much difficulty -- that regulation undercuts prosperity. It's baa-aaad. Irrationally, the sheep bleat: "No Rules Rule! No Rules Rule!" So the flock retires the shepherd. The slavering beasts circle, nodding their heads, tongues lolling past sharp, white teeth. They're smiling, right? Nice doggies. Whew, geniuses. Thanks a lot. Sure, my 401(k) has been growing negatively (as you likely would describe it) since New Year's Day, and my retirement age has moved up to 75, or maybe 80. Depends on the wolf at the door. For this, we should give up Social Security? contracostatimes.com