[ExI] AIG Bail out

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Sun Sep 21 09:48:32 UTC 2008


On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 6:33 AM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> So it resembles a classic bubble? In 1637 at its height, surely many
> people knew that the tulip mania could not go on forever, but merely
> kept hoping to find "the greater fool", who'd turn over even more
> cash than they themselves had paid.

Yes. My final impression, both at a theoretical and at a professional
level, is that players, savers and investors are not necessarily
stupid, but "markets" often are. Meaning that they suffer from the
fact that you do not really bet on your views on likely actual
developments, but rather on the expected... expectations of the
market, in a recursive and pyramidal scheme.

As a dot com boomer, who managed to become rich by creating and
listing companies that never made a real dollar in their entire
existence, "profits are for the sissies", shares prices are
everything, and demand for shares is entirely based on the supposed
price you may be able to resell them one minute after your purchase.

Stefano Vaj



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