Occupy Motijheel

Recent events are forcing me to write this.

Motijheel is the financial centre of Dhaka, Bangladesh, alot like what Wall St. is for New York and that is also where the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) is located.

Recently, starting sometime last year, the DSE started to lose points, and lose alot it did. A thousand-odd points in a day or two. For an exchange that was around the 8000-point mark, that is like losing, somewhere in the ballpark region, 10% of its value. There was a hue and cry as “investors” took to the streets and demanded the government “fix” the problem. Most surprisingly, no one has really explained or tried to understand why this happened. But that is a different story, the point of this article is to point out why “Occupy Motijheel” is wrong, dead wrong.

The theme of the “Occupy” protests in the US is basically this – Stop spending our money (tax revenues) on the millionaires (financial institutions) who made bad business decisions. That is NOT the case here. The government is not spending taxpayer money to prop up the market hence the issue of having a mass protest to FORCE the government to do that is plainly stupid (in a country where around 40% live under the poverty line, it is FAR BEYOND stupid…far beyond retarded as well). Then let us go for another solution, the government can print money and use that to for market support. Here’s the big question, where’s the money going to come from? It comes from future taxpayers (bond sale and then taxing the population) or printing money (seigniorage) that leads to inflation, so let your children get screwed later is the only choice available here.

“What? I can profit from the stock market!!!” Whatever profit one makes in the stock market HAS to come from someone else. If there was only one being in the market, that being would never make a profit, if it did, it would have to make a loss as well, thereby balancing out. Two entities, one profits one loses. n-number of entities, some win some lose. This holds regardless of whether or not it is apparent to anyone.

So how does the stock market gain value? It doesn’t. People think it does, or are led to believe it will, and rush to pour their money in there. So with everyone pouring in their money, the stock market “gains value”. If you have $10 in your pocket and you want to buy anything, the maximum you can pay for it is $10. Anyone with more than that coming along and wanting to buy the same will be ready (assuming that person wants it that badly) and able to pay more. Simple addition and subtraction.

So why the weeping and the angst over this? Let me reframe it this way, why did all these people rush to place all their hard earned cash in such a gamble? The brokers should’ve warned “investors” about this possibility, the investors should’ve studied up on this before putting their money where they are unwilling to put their mouths, the regulators should’ve put up red flags and acted to protect the investors…so many failures at so many different levels…the stupidity is astounding. It is even more astounding considering the fact that most of these investors are NOT wealthy and invested in such  a high risk operation. (Even having trillions did not stop the financial crisis from tearing apart all the huge banking corporations.)

This hopefully clears up why I think Occupy Motijheel is a load of baloney.

PS: Taking conspiracy theories into account, WTF do you throw your money where the likelihood of it getting stolen is so high?

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