Sacking the Market

Sacking the Treasury

It’s a form of Tuna, too. After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, people went wild. They broke into every government building and the numerous Presidential Palaces and ransacked each one of them. The 24-hour News Stations aired footage of men carrying away filing cabinets and swivel office chairs and desks. Framed pictures, computers and copy machines were prized loot while the Capitol burned and the frenzy of liberation from one despotic regime to another took hold and the light of reason failed to illuminate the minds and hearts of men. No one was around to stop them or protect the assets of the once powerful totalitarian government. Somewhere around $600 billion in US currency likewise disappeared in the mêlée that went on for days until the elation ran out of steam and an uneasy quietness enveloped the country.

Years later the American financial architecture suffered a catastrophic failure that resembled the aftermath of carpet bombing from high overhead with munitions that targeted only the infrastructure while leaving the shocked and disoriented population largely intact and wondering exactly what had happened and when it would all be over. The zombie-like inhabitants of the nation wondered around in the metaphorical wasteland landscape looking for loved ones or serviceable objects to dust off and try to put to some further use. They ambled aimlessly around the rubble of their once great nation with all cogent thoughts suitably shaken out of their heads. Others sat around their television and computer screens straining to hear some news that was good or to glean from millions of webpages some insights as to what was going to happen next.

While the shell-shocked people remained static, the predators moved in to clean out the accounts of the now ruined financial houses and banks that still had a mission to fulfill and a semblance of momentum to keep going. Government promised help in the form of taxpayer provided bailout funds and the predators kept draining the accounts. Men and women who specialized in economics and accounting principles and practices looked at the sinking financial companies and knew that there was money that was going to waste and it should be theirs. They placed Sell Orders in the still functioning stock markets for stocks that they did not own. Then as the prices continued to fall they repurchased those stocks…