Essays
Buying Tomorrow
When the rest of the world are mad, we must imitate them in some measure.
—John Martin, Martin's Bank, 1720
As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance.
—Charles Prince, Citigroup, 2007
It would be fair to guess that Charles Prince’s echo of John Martin, a banker who was nearly ruined by the South Sea Bubble, reflects a sincerity that was blissfully ignorant rather than an irony that wasn’t. One might even be willing to bet on it—if, that is, certain information about Prince’s knowledge and state of mind were actually forthcoming. A wager entails uncertainty, but without the prospect of a future event coming to pass, uncertainty is worth little besides the mystery it affords.
To cast lots for Christ’s robe, as Pontius Pilate’s soldiers did, was to play a game of chance. Gambling is one of those activities, along with religious worship and prostitution, that was popular already by the time any recording of history began. Our modern financial system owes much to this desire to make a fortune off of Fortune, though a society that organizes itself around financial risk-taking, whose national assets oscillate in an invisible cloud of ones and zeros, requires a very particular understanding of what the future can hold. Finance makes a commodity out of expectation, something to be bought (preferably low) and sold (preferably high). In the case of the worried farmer or the worried breadwinner, the future can also be viewed with suspicion, but finance enables the anxious to trade one possibility for another: both the speculator and the hedger are seeking the best future that money can buy.
As much as the old saw about money and happiness gets deployed by the usual suspects—grandmothers, clergymen, credit-card commercials—there seems to be some confusion in this country over which one is the legitimate object for pursuit. If anything, the optimistic strain that runs through American history has been a boon to the financial industry, which has literally capitalized on the belief that in the future lies prosperity. Technology has made it possible for finance to transcend the limits of the material world: so much money changing invisible hands has long since become the stuff of American dreams. And for the Chicken Littles who equate the future with decline and decrepitude, financiers found a way to make money for them (and, naturally, from them), too. Insurance for those who don’t want to lose, and short-selling for those who still want to win.
But the future was not always so amenable to our business plans. As long as the future belonged to the gods, there was little arguing with the inevitability of fate. Despite his parents’ deployment of the ultimate avoidance strategy—tie baby’s ankles together; order servant to abandon baby on mountainside—Oedipus killed his father anyway. In Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Peter Bernstein points out that the future had to be something other than “the murky domain of oracles and soothsayers” before it could be put “in the service of the present.”
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Comments Post a Comment »
I am an active trader of mainly, the stock index futures products - NQ and ES, the NASDAQ 100 and the S&P 500. My main tactic nowadays -- this week -- , is to buy pullbacks within uptrends in very small quantity and then sell those contracts(s) on price rises -- ascertaining when to do that is the tough part. Much more conservative than buy and hold but unfortunately, it requires far too much screen time.
So for me, using futures is not about leverage or gambling but about lower commissions, diversifying with an index, and tax and accounting advantages.
At any rate, this piece that you wrote is simply brilliant. Thank you!
Posted by heywally on Sat 17 Sep 2011
I hope the rest of this piece is better researched than the alleged narcotic/Narcissus derivation.
Posted by Archcritick on Thu 13 Oct 2011
Female "chastity" would be easy to measure. If the female did not give birth less than nine months after she married, presumptively she was chaste.
Posted by steve on Thu 13 Oct 2011
Archcritick said: "I hope the rest of this piece is better researched than the alleged narcotic/Narcissus derivation.
I'm not sure if you're implying something I'm missing here, but etymologically the derivation is correct. Narcissus is drawn from the plant narcissus, deriving the plant's numbing, sedative -- narcotic quality.
Posted by Jayber Crow on Thu 13 Oct 2011
Yes, I would also be interested in why Archcritick thinks the Narcissus derivation is negligent(?) It seems to me both correct and apposite to the subject matter...
Posted by MA on Fri 14 Oct 2011
The Quants, published last year, delves into the crashes of the past 15 years in an informative manner.
And Nasim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan, published just before the sub-prime crash, was amazingly prescient.
Posted by The Sanity Inspector on Fri 14 Oct 2011
Belatedly, I am tempted to do a Rosanne Rosannadanna and simply say, "Never mind." I had seen sources that hold the narke/ narkoun/ Narcissus derivation to be speculative, but more seem to consider it established.
If I were to pick nits, however, I would still say that while "narcotic" and "narcosis" (and the indispensable "narc out") may share etymological roots with Narcissus, that doesn't mean they "derive from" the name, of either the flower or the self-admirer; it seems far more likely to me that the two strands arose independently.
But thanks for causing me to look at this more closely.
Posted by Archcritick on Wed 19 Oct 2011
Dear Jennifer,
Re: Mac the Knife
As a comment option was not afforded the reader for your review in The Nation, I was forced to seek this platform, where incidentally I look forward to reading this piece. However, without further ado:
It is no small feat, that of reducing one of the finest sociopolitical minds of the 20th century as you do, into a mere opportunistic critic of literary style. But, this you have done, and without even a nod of acknowledgement to Macdonald's contributions to political and social theory. Included, ostensibly for trivial purposes, is barely a 2-sentence dismissive squirt of mention to political affiliation - as if the man, or sociopolitical ideology itself - were nothing more than a side condiment to the almighty world of literary style critique.
Astounding.
Thank you.
Posted by Jason Schwartz on Mon 5 Dec 2011
Nasim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan, published just before the sub-prime crash, was amazingly prescient. ">wood pellet processing
Posted by gqbhi on Fri 27 Apr 2012