Economist in Evening Standard disgusted at Profit From Disaster

www.thisislondon.co.uk...

I read this article in the Evening Standard yesterday and the writer who is a former city type named Geraint Anderson discusses his disgust at his 'friends' who right away start to decide how to make money out of a crisis when it happens. Despite himself being involved in this before he comdems it to an extent. They discuss how money was made from the Iraq conflicts and even Japan saying that one of his firends is aparently buying shares in Tepco who own Japans nuclear power plants, his logic being that if the company enters serious difficulties that it will be nationalised and the debt would be lost as it becomes government guaranteed.

Anyway I thought I'd share it as I found it suprising how blantent they can be, like the email they just stopped short of sending to their clients right after the 9/11 attacks about what investments to make when a collegue pointed out have massively insensitive and disgusting it was.

Thoughts?

reply to post by clintdelicious


Right after the the Earthquake/Tsunami I thought the same thing! The first thing CNBC talked about was the financials of the situation and moves to make. How about donating money to the victims? But of course not, that wouldn't benefit anyones portfolio. Same thing on the middle east crisis. It reminds me of that Bible verse "you will here of wars and rumors of wars and see that you are not alarmed". How true is that statement? How many of the sheeple even know about the lybian bombings days aftyer it happened? Not my group of college-age friends. When you do tell them most dismiss it because "people are always killing each other over there".

The basic human emotions of compassion and gratefullness are be weathered away as sure as our inalienable rights are.

This cuts right to the heart of what is wrong with capitalism, at least the unregulated heartless variety that we have today.
So while the rich get richer, the people in the path of destruction (either of the natural or man-made variety) become pawns in their game of profit through suffering.
If the rich control the government, then you are guaranteed a fair amount of suffering somewhere so that more profits can be made. I think that sums up US policy since 2001 and probably well before.
The question is then how to take profit out of disasters.
I don't think we've devised a political system yet that provides for the basic needs of people while allowing some type of incentive for innovation and productivity.
We may yet get there, who knows?
Human ingenuity is boundless and there is still a future for mankind.
It seems we only learn through tragedy and hurt so God knows we ought to be the smartest generation yet.

Personally I'd like to see some mainstream authors approach the subject of actually CAUSING disasters for profit.

Why not get right to the point.

Might be immoral but probably impossible to be made illegal.

Example. A plane crash. The shares for the airline in question will fall as short term investors (the ones who work minute by minute) react to the situation. The longer term traders (who may work by weeks or months) buy as the stock reaches the lower level and sell later when the airline isnt in the news anymore and the stock is back at 'normal' levels.

Q. What laws would you put in place to stop any of this happening?

reply to post by alfa1


Its a very tough subject, but I think that certain situations should have some sort of limit on the amount of profits made. For example if a company was making money from aid supplied to a country hit by a disaster it should be regulated to ensure that the people arnt being taken advantage of with over priced goods.

reply to post by Skerrako


Charlie Sheen is more important.