Fred. Again.

Thoughts on a couple articles from Fred Reed's site:

I used to care about stock markets. Then I noticed something about the nightly "analysis" from places like NPR: the exact same event could move the stock market up, down, or sideways. For example, rumors of war would "scare" the stock market one day and cause it to drop, cause "uncertainty" the next moving the market sideways, then "strengthen" it the following day when the bombs start dropping due to the end of uncertainty and the prospect of increased government orders for military hardware. In other words, stock markets are random with only slightly better odds than a government-run lottery and about the same odds as blackjack. In fact, I've made a better return on my "investments" at the Vegas MGM blackjack tables than I ever have in the stock market.

Then I started looking carefully at other "indicators" such as GDP and economic growth. I realized that the tsunami in Indonesia was good, hurricanes wiping out entire sections of the US coastline and leaving a major population center under water was fantastic. My parents being satisfied with living in the same house for forty years was bad, treasonous even. How dare they not "trade up" every three-to-five years as they should. Every day it makes less and less sense to me, so I decided that I'm not going to play anymore. When I was growing up, all the cool people walked around spouting variations of "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" My 21st century version is "What if they handed me and economic treadmill and I refused to get on?"

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Go read Fred.

Fred also reflects on our national myth vs. our national reality: the rugged, individualistic, risk-taking lovers of freedom we think we are vs. the sissyfied, herd-following, seatbelted/airbaged/crash-helmeted lovers of safety-above-all-else we have become.