Post by nrt on Feb 23, 2014 2:59:54 GMT -8
Finance, Forecasts and the Free Market
(a cautionary tale)
Nige
He made a market in moonbeams,
Well some people will buy anything, it’s true.
Though he says that everything in life has a value
What he wants is to take all of your money from you.
He prepared a turgid, forty-four page prospectus
Filled it with figures, graphs, quotations and lists
Then wrote a short, snappy, single page, synopsis
So as to give less discerning readers ‘the gist.’
“Moonbeans are rarer than hens’ teeth!"
(It opened, teasingly, in this fanciful vein)
“While sunbeams are now ten-a-penny”
(Just one of the many ‘facts’ that he did not explain.)
But, this ‘fact’ was stuck into all his equations
Multiplied up (with cloud cover rates divided by sun spot activity) to generate the yield
That you ‘the canny handpicked investor’
Could expect once the contracts were sealed.
He even hired a well-known domestic abuser
To give his marketing soirées a kick
And help him pinpoint his preferred demographic;
Male... middle aged... greedy and thick.
The moonbeams, tagged and graded, once collected
Were to be locked in a vault, safe and sound
But no one thought this odd, or any sort of problem
“Well they’re far too valuable to just leave lying around!”
Eventually, of course, the party was over
Communication ceased, dividend payments failed to arrive.
Rumours spread that the moonbeams were toxic
So that no one in the business was now left alive.
When the police finally located 'Corporate Headquarters'
(Actually the back room of a fish shop in Stroud)
They were amazed to find no money, no vault and no moonbeams
Just a short, crumpled note, that one copper read out, aloud;
“Gone orf up to London, wiv what’s left of the money,
I’m done wiv all these get rich schemes,” it said,
“ ‘strikes me that you lot are easily dumb enough
So I’m now Chief Financial Advisor to The Treasury, peddling pipe-dreams, instead.”
... I wouldn't even know where to begin to write a poem on Free Markets. 
