A Big Joke...

...in honor of yet another hopium-fueled stock market rally (via Capitalists@Work):

Once upon a time, in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.

The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching.

The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one.

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.

While the man was away the assistant told the villagers, “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.”

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

They never saw the man nor his assistant again, and once again there were monkeys everywhere.

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.

(Image: source)

Comments

[Tom]

Good one Michael. Reminds me of the one about the dead horse and the market trader or hedge fund guy (depending on which version you heard).

It's a big scam - always has been - and the so-called "wealth" they create is a sham too. The insurance industry is just as bad (if not worse).

[roger]

hopium-fueled , there is an exchange value taking place in this story, except that the exchange value is not equal,somebody is being cheated,this is the story of all exchanges taking place in the world economy's, the difference is that in the stock market it is obvious whereas
in the commerce economy money serves as a smoke screen.
Simply put money is the opium of the crowd.

[Marion Shaw]

This is a good one, Michael; but
explain to me the ultimate
difference between this fraud
(the two men disappear with everyone's money)and our electronic
banking system. Are not most sums
of money (ie. the millions and
billions) no more than a legitimate
computer entry? How easy would that
be to jam up, gum up, mess up
and bring down? I recently met a
young guy who is on a team for a
big US bank, to keep the computers
running.
I could not shake the sensation
that I was living in a timed fantasy
world.

[roger]

Viewing technology in it's whole context not in the truncated mode,it has unlimited possibility's ,both
positive and negative, but in and of itself technology has no value and accomplishes nothing, it takes a human brain to activate it,the terrifying thing about it,is that it puts unlimited power in the hands of a few just like the accumulation of money does,only more so.Taking into account
the history of human behavior,and I mean all humans,(don't give me the BS that we are good and they are bad )there is much to fear.

[Tom]

Well Roger, i agree that in the wrong hands techology is lethal, but your statement that technology has unlimited possibilities is simply not true. With climate change now uncontrolable we're facing EXTINCTION and technology is not going to help us. In fact i would go so far as to say that all the technology and science (even math) that has been discovered has been used to oppress, destroy and cause harm because it was put into HUMAN hands - and we're so flawed that we can't even take care of each other, learn from our mistakes or even get along. Humanity itself is a failed experiment at this point. All of creation will be rendered meaningless as we all fry, drown or get radiated to death and take all the species we relied on with us because the mis-named homo-sapiens (i'll give you that we're clever, but in no stretch of the imagination or the definition of the word were we WISE) misused all it's grand ideas for the wrong reasons.

[roger]

@ Tom .
I stand corrected,bad choice of words. Technology so far has been very destructive,it has already affected the human capacity to think,the only bright spot I can think of,is medecine. it has been very destuctive of nature,it has an infinite capacity for production while negating the value of human labor,but I don't blame technology,the responsability rest totaly with the human greed.Yes we are the creation of nature and as such totaly subjective to it's laws.it made us and can also destroy us.We may already
have reached the tipping point.

[Nalu girl]

@ Roger and Tom,
The entire first half of tonight's national news (CBS) was devoted to weather-related disasters around the country. Extreme heat, drought, wildfires, more destructive storms .... The list goes on. Yet we still have deniers who refuse to even consider the fact that climate change is exacerbating these disasters that are wrecking people's lives. unfortunately those are the people with power who will sell down the river to preserve their profitable and lavish lifestyles.

[Richard]

The country will collapse from debt way before climate change destroys us. What the news should be talking about is a coutry which borrows billions everday because it can't pay its bills, a country that has not passed a budget in 3 years, a country passing more entitlements with no money to pay for it except more borrowed money. But the news will talk about the weather. I lived in Miami in 1992 and went through Andrew, I lived in Los Angeles in 1994 and went through North Ridge earthquake. Fires in Laguna Beach destroying 500 plus homes during the mid 1990's, fires in Malibu, mudslides too. Now I live in Naples Fl and we had tropical storm Debbie. How is that for the weather?! In the meantime, we should be discussing when 15 Trillion dollars in debt gets paid? (In 15 Trillion years?) Baby Boomers being the last of the middle class in America and being robbed by Wall Street Casino and a Fed Chairman manipulating interest rates so low you will not be able to retire with one million cash in the bank and your house paid off. Have you been to the supermarket lately? Food inflation is just getting started. So let's get back to gay marriage, entitlements, and the weather, especially the weather. And the band played on.

[gardener1]

Oh crap monkeys, that's absolutely great! Had us *howling*.

Dutifully copied and soon to be pasted in many an email.

Thanks for the giggle.

gardener1

[Monkeys run B.I.S.]

Banker to the Bankers Knows the Numbers Are Lying

The Bank for International Settlements, which acts as a bank for the world’s central banks, should know fudged numbers when it sees them. What may come as a surprise is how openly it has been discussing the problem of bogus balance sheets at large financial companies.

“The financial sector needs to recognize losses and recapitalize,” the Basel, Switzerland-based institution said in its latest annual report, released this week. “As we have urged in previous reports, banks must adjust balance sheets to accurately reflect the value of assets.” The implication is that many banks are showing inaccurate numbers now.

So there you have it. More than four years after the financial crisis began, it’s so widely accepted that many of the world’s banks are burying losses and overstating their asset values, even the Bank for International Settlements is saying so -- in writing. (The BIS’s board includes Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank.) It fully expects taxpayers to pick up the tab should the need arise, too.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-28/banker-to-the-bankers-knows-the-numbers-are-lying.html

[Corpsgonewild]

“The financial sector needs to recognize losses and recapitalize,”
In the 1980s Japan was the economic "miracle". The land that the Imperial Palace in Tokyo stood on was said to be worth more than the entire state of California.
Not much later that that, Japan's bubble burst.
Today, more than 30 years later, Japan has become moribund because Japanese bankers still aren't being honest about what their holding are valued at.
The Euro zone and the USA, faced with the same problem are currently scrambling to relieve their bankers of billions, if not trillions in over-valued, troubled assets.
The Federal Reserve TARPS, TWISTS, BAILS OUT, MERGES, REPOS, STRESS TESTS and PRINTS PAPER. All to make people forget there's a room full filing cabinet some where, stuffed with bad debt that was repaid by the taxpayers. The bankers have their own rooms full of these filing cabinets. Meanwhile middle class Americans takes a hit, in declining incomes and shrinking net worth.
Yes, the public gets lied to, and the public takes the biggest hit and the public suffers the most, As usual, the public gets played like a violin.

[Outtanames999]

Yes. The trouble is, the troubled assets are the mortgages on homes and there are too many of them and their combined value in default exceeds all of the actual monies on deposit in all of the banks. So, simply put, the troubled economy will not recover until the government takes the troubled mortgages off the troubled bankers troubled balance sheets and the government pays back the money it borrowed to buy them. At that point the downturn will end.

At the same time, you have 3 to 4 million boomlet kids per year graduating from college and attempting to enter the workforce. Their parents are not ready to retire, and the money has to come from somewhere, so in order to pay them, you can either cut the parents' pay in half or you're going to have to increase the money supply. There simply isn't enough money in the current economy to pay the new generation and their parents.

We faced a more or less similar situation in the 1970's when the boomers themselves entered the workforce. Back then the money was printed and the cost of housing, cars, food, clothing and money doubled over the span of a couple of years, partly due to demand from new household formations, partly due to inflation resulting from an increase in the money supply.

We will need a similar solution in the near future.

Now I will tell you a joke about gold.

Armageddon is here. But the villagers are not worried because they bought gold. Enough gold to get them through any crisis. At least they think they did.

Unfortunately, half of the villagers will never get their gold because it never existed. They were swindled. The vaults are empty. They only bought a picture and an idea of gold. For them, there never was and never will be any gold.

The other half of the villagers could potentially possess their gold because it does in fact exist, but in order to do so they will have to go get their gold from the vault which is located some distance away. Once they pick up their gold, they will have to transport it back to their home vault. Unfortunately, armed robbers are lying in wait for them along the road and neither they nor their gold will make it home.

A few villagers stored their gold at home. They have a problem too - they can't leave their home for fear of their stash being stolen while they are away. They can't take their gold with them for fear of being robbed on the road. They can hire armed guards to protect their gold but there is nothing to prevent the guards from robbing them at gunpoint. And so they sit at home and starve to death on a gold diet.

Those few villagers who are not robbed or killed are contacted by the government and informed that gold has been declared illegal for anyone but the government to possess and sets about seizing all gold in the country. A modest value is offered as compensation - a fraction of what the villagers paid -- and they are paid in the currency of the realm - the same currency that the villagers sought to avoid by buying gold.

Their compensation is conveniently deposited by the government... in a bank.