I have no money in the stock market-well, I mean, I could have ended the sentence at the word money, but today I want to write about the buying, selling, and trading of stocks and bonds. Please accept my disclaimer that I know absolutely nothing about this world despite the fact that I worked in financial institutions as a very indolent administrative sorry executive assistant from 2005-2010. During those years I made a lot of money (in my world) in salary and bonus (over 100k in 2007) and collected a nice little nest egg in a 401K.
I think this nest egg was up to 16K by 2012, the year that I drained it so I could use it to grow Free Bread. I took big tax penalties for this and I probably used it unwisely because I had no financial support system to teach me how to access or spend affordable money for my business but nevertheless, ever since I drained my 401K I obviously have no money in the stock market.
And here’s what I have learned about the stock market since having and losing a small business. I have learned that I don’t believe in capitalism if capitalism means having a stock market. I fundamentally disagree with the premise that we are allowed to invest financially in a business that we have no otherwise connection to. It doesn’t make sense to me from a very practical standpoint.
I give 800$ to Namecorp but I don’t know anything about the 2-1000 people who are at the top of the org chart, much less the bottom. Who is actually making the calls. I have no idea what people and other businesses those people have fucked over to get there, how many women have been sexually assaulted or how many immigrants have been stolen from? How many rules have been broken? How much money is overseas? How many sex offenders? How do I know that the person spending my $800 isn’t using it to pay uninsured sex workers? Or to build a future fiasco product that will bankrupt the business? And why does Namecorp want money from me, who could just as easily be Charlie Sheen as not be Charlie Sheen? Because they don’t care. Nobody gives a shit about anything anymore.
These public companies who are traded on the stock market are only releasing 20% ownership in exchange for cash. This is a governed minimum and was in fact raised in 2017 from 10% which is just astounding. So the vast majority, 80%, is still private, and its public will never have any say in what the actual companies are deciding to move forward with. They are allowed to know exactly 20% of the stuff that’s really going on in that business. What is that, quarterly earnings, if they or their financial advisors bother to look, which likely won’t happen unless there’s a giant dip in the market. So nobody cares what the company is learning or collateralizing or failing in unless there’s a giant dip in the market because its all about the share price but the shares have become so liquidated by people who genuinely don’t care because they have too much stress in their private lives or in their own businesses. Most of these companies are decades if not centuries old and the people involved in the day-to-day operations have not learned from the mistakes that the founders and then their successors inevitably made because their egos are too big.
Americans let people get away with far too much nonsense. As long as you get a big enough pile of money together, people turn their heads. And when people turn their heads, the street sweepers stop coming. And those piles of dirt become not unlike that enormous trash glob in the middle of the ocean. So thank you very much, I’ll keep my $800, if i ever make it, and spend it on my vices.
Now I’m not one to complain and not offer a solution lest I become part of the problem. My own experience with a business was that I did not want financial partners (investors) who were not involved in the day to day operations because it seems like a conflict of interest, and way too much pressure to put on the operators (me). So in some ways I opted out of investment for fear that the expectations that came along with that investment would crush me. So you see its a paradox because I got crushed the other way, by not taking an investor. And we are back at “I quit everything.”
And all of this comes back to the 15 minutes that the NYSE gets- the Dow Jones, The S & P 500 and Nasdaq all got their cute little 15 minute halts and the banks get an enormous infusion of liquid to keep the economy running, which is great, because thankfully we have it? Or do we? Isn’t the US in massive debt? And the banks, the rich, are getting the infusion. The rich ran out of money. It’s like, these are crisis measures, erected to fix problems for the rich, made by the rich. And nobody else, no other businesses, are protected. My landlord doesn’t get 15 minutes nor does he get an infusion. Neither does my librarian or my neighbor. Doesn’t anyone else see what is happening here?
I QUIT EVERYTHING 