CONFIDENCE GAMES

So here we are buffeted with the news that the nation's banks and mortgage lenders are in dire straits due to many years of rampant unregulated risky business practices. Well, it's their money, you say, let them risk it! No, it's our money, so don't let them go all cowboy with granny's retirement fund. One wonders whatever happened to solid, bespectacled and cautious bankers and lenders who kept a proprietary eye on the bottom line and didn't play roulette with their investors' money and wouldn't dream of taking stupid chances. It seems that one by one they're being replaced by pyramid game scammers in designer suits and $500 haircuts who just can't get enough of adrenaline-filled thrills with somebody else's money.

If that's the way you are, shouldn't you just go to Vegas and blow your your own dough? This way you get your sweaty addiction-fix and the U.S. government saves trillions by not having to rescue your foolish ass. But apparently the banking and mortgage industries are up to their marble-lined penthouse offices in con artists and gambling addicts, and as a result Uncle Sam is on the hook for bailing them out in order to avoid a repeat of 1929, when banks and the stock market crashed and it rained executive suicides from the gleaming towers of Wall Street and ushered in a worldwide depression that lasted over a decade. Ask any elderly person what that was like and you'll get a sad earful of woe. 25% unemployment, bread lines, itinerant workers bumming their way around the nation in search of a day's pay and a square meal. A long national nightmare.

Already the banking crisis is affecting the stock market, with a crisis of confidence driving down prices. It's hard to say why the stock market is that way. When you go to a store to buy, say, a bag of potato chips, the price is 99 cents no matter what your level of confidence is regarding those potato chips. The shopkeeper doesn't offer you a discount if you feel pessimistic, nor does he jack up the price if you're excited about the chips. And he never consults the wizard-like predictions of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank before deciding on the price of your purchase. It's 99 cents, thank you very much, here's your penny change. Next!

The stock market doesn't seem to work in that concrete, easy to understand way. Prices don't rise or fall because of anything so practical it seems. Stocks are not tangible items like a bag of chips but instead pieces of paper representing shares in a company. Logic would tell you that the price is worth a proportionate fraction of the company's total net worth, say if a company had a hundred dollars in assets and there are a hundred shares sold, then each share is worth one dollar. Right? Sounds reasonable, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The price of stocks seems to depend on the mood of stock brokers, unlike the potato chips which are 99 cents no matter what mood is gripping the shopkeeper at the moment. This is something other than capitalism, the system that made this nation wealthy, it's voodoo economics with an emphasis on the voodoo.

So what can we the lay people do to improve the mood of our financial movers and shakers? Maybe send them jellybeans or funny e-mails or something. Send comedians around to their offices to lighten up the mood before they hit the trading floor. Hell, if that's how they operate, why not promote the 3-martini breakfast so they're real happy when they start setting the prices of out nations assets? No, scratch that one, maybe some of them are morose drunks and prices will plummet while they sulk and reflect upon how nobody understands them and everybody is out to get them. Then they'll turn mean and start slashing prices on Fortune 500 companies just for spite. We don't need that. There's always medication, though, anti-depressants and the like.

There must be some way to get the stock market to price itself in a realistic and predictable manner. Oh, I know! Make some friggin' rules! Enforce them! Close some loopholes already! Do away with sleight of hand manipulation. Make our stock, commodities and money markets more transparent institutions so that the public can readily tell what's what and who's who when it comes to figuring out which companies are sound and which are on shaky legs, and which executives are honest and which of them are thieving bums. Why is it necessary for these institutions to resemble gambling casinos? While there is risk inherent in every business venture and every investment, is it necessary for our economic engines to be manned by the sort of sleazy operators that casinos attract, people you wouldn't buy a used car from?

Put some more of those guys who cheat in jail when they waltz off with billions of dollars. Real jail, for a real long stretch, none of this minimum security Federal country club prison crap for fifteen months. Maybe as long as the Feds are picking up the tab for the screw-ups of these giant mortgage companies, they might as well spend a few extra bucks and investigate the head honchos who presided over this disaster, see what laws they broke and how much dough was stolen on their watch. Bank robbery is a serious crime with severe penalties when you do it with a mask and note to the teller. Why is it different when you do it from the comfort of your corner office? And to the tune of billions, no less. America is a successful country with a lot of money floating around that was earned by the life's labor of millions and millions of workers. Don't let anybody treat that dough like it was their own personal seed money for a high-stakes poker game. There's too many bluffers out there.