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Let's look at this 51 point rise in the Dow in this light, which comes at the height of a long string of rising prices. What does it tell one in terms of reality?
Someone once said, "Suppose a robber set up a heist for which he needed four people. Would he go out and look for twenty helpers? No, because the loot would have to be shared among twenty rather than four. The same goes for the stock market. The more money that people pour into the market, the smaller is the share the money buys." This, of course is not how the market works. The shares in the market don't get watered down. The reality is worse. The shares are bought for triple retail value and are sold to the next guy for more. Some make a profit in this game. Some loose. The last guy in the chain, of course, ends up holding the bag when the market crashes from its inflated state back to reality. After it hits bottom, the cycle starts all over gain. This, in short, is the system that people celebrate.
One must assume that every investor instinctively knows that the market values are unreal, but this feeling is denied because every investor also knows that the aggregates he buys, no matter how worthless, can be sold the very next day for more, which is generally true. The reasoning is, that there is always a greater fool coming into the markets, to carry forward the game. Thus, the so-called "strength in the market" is really a measure of rising folly. Most investors know this, but they jump in and buy anyway, in total denial of what they perceive as reality. In this case, it is not intelligence anymore, that is driving the game, but tradition, emotion, hope, luck, greed, etc.. After all, what worked last week, must work again - one simply mustn't go against tradition. Right?
Wrong! By following foolish tradition, folly gets multiplied. If this were not so, the markets would never crash. The greater the folly, the more spectacular (or tragic) the crash will be. The celebration in response to market prices going through the roof is not justified, unless one is looking for fireworks and has a bundle tied up in stock index put options. One should wonder why nobody celebrates when automobile prices double or triple?
Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is really a play about stock market investors. Prince Hamlet recognizes right off the bat that he has two choices. He can go to work and do what he knows in his heart he must do, even though the imperative of the case goes against all tradition, customs, and convention, even the law. Or he can choose to wallow in doubt, indecision, whatever is traditionally done, and seal his own doom. The latter, actually happens by default rather than by choice. This default becomes the doom for Hamlet. Not being able to act according to his wisdom, he denies the validity of his own intelligence and lets the default carry the day. This lack of intelligent action opens the portal to another's manipulation by which the tragedy ends in tragedy as any tragedy must. That is what the denial of reality invariably amounts to.
The CFC ban: A crime against the truth - killing humanity.
The add in the paper that asked the public to turn in their older refrigerators, involves a still deeper denial of reality, a denial that the advertiser may not even be aware of, and might be horrified if he was. In Hamlet's case, the denial of the validity of what his intelligence told him, brought about the certain doom for Hamlet and a tragic loss for the nation of Denmark. The result of the tragedy is, that everyone looses. This result is realized in real life, too.
Unlike to the background in Shakespeare's play, we live in a democracy where people are not bound to a king, but have control over their destiny. Thus, the society takes the place of Prince Hamlet. But does the society really exercise control over its destiny? How much in today's world is actually done in Hamlet's way, by the fool's default of following fears, indecision, tradition, rather than intelligent choices to rule?
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