Saturday, January 14, 2017

Under the Buttonwood Tree

        On May 17, 1792, a group of New York stockbrokers and merchants, who would forever after be known as the 'New York Nogoodniks', met under a buttonwood tree in front of 68 Wall Street and signed an agreement which would lead to the formation of the New York Stock Exchange.
        225 years, numerous bankruptcies, lost life savings and college funds, as well as a few suicides later and the world is still wondering why we don't do something to stop all the carnage. Didn't every government in the world just meet in Paris and decide that we can finally do something about the weather? 
        Well, if we can fix the weather, or the climate, which has been changing for four and half billion years and is controlled by changes in the sun, the planets, Earth orbit, Earth tilt, winds, currents, movement of tectonic plates, volcanoes, and pretty much anything else in nature that you can think of, don't you think we can control something as relatively simple as a stock market which has only been around for 225 years and is controlled 100% by...the folks? 
        Of course, there is always the possibility that nothing we do will actually be able to change the weather, or the climate, (take your pick), that it's as likely to be able to be controlled as would be the stock market and that the only people to really believe otherwise, or at least to say they do, will be governments who can impose new 'carbon taxes' and their friends in the solar, wind, and 'renewable' energy businesses.