Stan Apps

Market Freakout

traders

they are irrational
like a force of nature

if they freak out, no
make that WHEN they freak out
they will freak out sooner or later
and they’ll take us all down

sooner or later
like a force of nature
they’ll freak out
they can’t be stopped
or reasoned with
for entirely rational, logical reasons
they’ll go totally freakily illogically crazy
and you can’t blame them then
for taking us all down

for it will be the logic of the market
the perfect streamlined all-controlling logic of the market
that freaks them, flips them, makes them sooooo scared
they’ll sell everything they own or don’t own at firesale prices
and everything that we own or don’t own will be along for the ride
as if we didn’t really own anything, really
sort of like we were still peasants all along
but we were just borrowing all this non-peasant stuff, but
we had to give it back

the only way we can stop their irrational pessimistic freakoutism
from annihilating all value
is to give them boatloads of money
they’ll have to spend a while annihilating the value of all that money
it will delay them

it’s sort of like blackmail
except they’re not responsible
they’re too irrational
to be culpable
if crazy people annihilate the value
it’s not their fault
because they were crazy at that time
and also because what made them crazy
is the mercilessly total rationality of the market
which also can’t be blamed
it would be like blaming the truth for being true
unfair
the truth can’t help being true
it’s in its nature

this totally unavoidable value-annihilating freakout
it’s in the nature
it’s in the nature of how the market conducts
totally rational business transactions through us
transactions that totally rationally extract value out of value
until someone freaks out totally upon noticing
how abstract containers of value slump inwards at extreme and sudden
roller-coaster-like angles
throwing our perspective around like a Michael Bay tracking shot

it’s in the nature
nothing we can do about it
except pay our money
and since we’ve got our tickets
might as well sit there and watch it
might be entertaining in some kind of way
VALUE-ANNIHILATING FISCAL DISASTER, sounds good

maybe at the end we’ll even clap
or maybe just sit there some more?

return to SHAMPOO 36