In the stock market there are three different types of animals. There are the bulls, the bears, and the pigs. When all is said and done, the bulls and the bears always make money, or at least break even. The pigs, however, always get slaughtered.
If you looked at the types of animals playing a significant role in the downfall of the stock market this summer than you can certainly say that this market was not kosher.
What perhaps was the most surprising aspect of this summer, was not so much the continued Enron fallout, or the revelation that hundreds of millions are missing from WorldCom. The most surprising aspect was that Martha Stewart, of all people, had sold her stock on insider information.
This came as a shock to me personally because, while I consider Martha Stewart an obsessive, mean- spirited, superficial vampire, I do not consider her a stock cheat. Low and behold however, look how the mighty have fallen.
This only proves my point that if you get greedy in the stock market, you’re going to get killed. Look at what happened to poor Martha. On the surface you might think she will never go to jail. Or, if she is ever found guilty, she will only have to pay a fine, which in relative value, would be peanuts to her.
But look at what has happened to her since she got caught cheating the stock market. Her company, Omnimedia, which is publicly traded on the stock market, has dropped from 21 dollars a share to only eight dollars.
She is being sued by many of her stockholders because of the drop, and this does not even touch on the fact that she is pissing off congressional investigators more and more every day because of her reluctance to cooperate.
So what’s my point? Is my only goal in this column to completely rag on the spawn of Satan herself? No, Martha does not deserve 500 words; she only deserves about 10 with a fine lace doily around them.
My point is essentially that Stewart, in a nutshell, represents everything that is wrong with the market and our economy.
People that have been stealing, or believe that they are so powerful that they can get away with stealing, affect all of us. When companies declare Chapter 11, not only does the market drop to dangerously low levels, but also thousands of people end up losing their jobs and, in many cases, all of their retirement funds.
So how can we solve this problem? I think this is the perfect example of how hard prison time can actually deter people from committing crimes. Do you think if Martha Stewart really thought that she would be hanging tapestries from an eight-by- ten prison cell she would actually break the law? I think Martha knows she would last about five seconds in prison.
Or what about Kenny Lay? Do you think if Lay thought he was actually going to have to play maid to a 6’10” man named Butch he would have hidden all that money? I think not.
We as a country are just realizing how serious these crimes are. They are almost worse than most other crimes because when these felonies are committed, thousands of people are affected. We need to start treating these crimes with the seriousness that they deserve. Instead of giving slaps on the wrists or fines that end up becoming a tax write-off, make these white-collar scumbags do hard time and be screwed just as hard as all of the people they screwed.