Money Doesn't Disappear, But Common Sense Does

I thought I explained this to you before. When the stock market crashes, the money does not disappear, it just goes somewhere else. There are lots of places money can go nowadays, and many of them aren't in this country. When people believe that the market is going to go down, they sell their stocks and put their money into something else. These beliefs are not always logical either. When they had that fake government shutdown a few years ago, U.S. debt was rated down from "AAA" to "AA+". This caused the stock market to go into a tailspin, although I'm not sure why, the crises was about U.S. debt, not about the stock market. Incredibly, many of the people who bailed out of the stock market actually put their money into U.S. debt. Go figure!

The neat thing about the securities markets is their liquidity. If you want to buy, there is always somebody who wants to sell and, if you want to sell, there is always somebody who wants to buy. When more people want to buy than sell, the price gets driven up, and vice versa. Real estate is not nearly as liquid, you can sit on a property for years trying to sell it, and you keep paying taxes on it while you wait. That's why I got Beaglesonia so cheap, you know. My colleague at the paper mill had bought a number of properties back in the 1970s, when conventional wisdom said that their prices couldn't do anything but go up. I think it was around 1975 when the real estate market crashed for the first time in 30 years. We had just put our house on the market when I heard the news, and it took us another four or five years to get out from under it. Meanwhile, I was driving 20 miles one way to work, and the price of gas went through the roof. By 1986 my friend had unloaded all of his investment properties. I don't know how he made out on the other ones, but he lost money on Beaglesonia. I didn't dicker him down either, I paid exactly what he was asking for it.

I think that Israel has a more rational foreign policy than our country does. When they are attacked, they fight back. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Meanwhile, Uncle Stupid is giving foreign aid to both sides. What's up with that? If I didn't know any better, I would say that they were trying to keep the conflict going forever, but that would be just paranoid. The good news is that Israel must be winning, because the U.N. is calling for a cease fire. They always do that whenever the good guys are winning, and these are the people you want ruling the whole world.