what the triumph of free-market capitalism really means. What it means is euphoria and panic. If investments are okey-dokey, we’re all making a fortune selling Pfizer shares to each other. Convenience stores put twenty-dollar bills in the TAKE ONE/LEAVE ONE tray. The World Bank gives toasters to Africa. If investments are not-so-hotso, we throw up our hands and declare bankruptcy. Jobs get so scarce we have to pay to baby-sit for other people’s kids. And the Salvation Army goes up and down the Bowery taking soup back from bums. The investment business is based on people being able to do what they want with their money. They may want to do some odd things. “People put their money where their thoughts are,” said one investment banker I interviewed. This means that there are a lot of men who are, so to speak, in financial topless bars, sticking millions of dollars into the G-strings of lap-dancing debts and equities. “If a thing can move freely, it can move stupidly,” said another investment banker. This is how booms and busts develop in the marketplace. And these booms and busts can have larger consequences, such as in 1929 when stocks were crashing, banks were collapsing, and President Hoover was hoovering around. Pretty soon, you could buy the New York Central Railroad for a wooden nickel, except nobody could afford wood. People had to make their own nickels at home out of old socks, which had also been boiled, along with the one remaining family shoe, to make last night’s dinner. So the kids had to walk to school with pots and pans on their feet through miles of deep snow because no one had the money for good weather. My generation has heard about this in great detail from our parents, which is why we put them in nursing homes. Our own kids will probably be shunting us off to the senior care facility when we start telling them about the Asia crisis. Back in 1997 there’d been a bull market in stocks since the apatosaurus roamed the earth. Inflation scares were limited to newspaper stories about silicone breast implants. The unemployment rate was so low that if your dog wandered into a McDonald’s, it would wander out wearing a TRAINEE badge. And Asian economies were even stronger than ours. They had some kind of “Asian values” thing going on, involving hard work, thrift, respect for the family, and fortune cookies that read, “Confucius say: Do your homework.” Plus, countries in Asia had smart government policies, such as “Export everything.” The world was getting calculators, stereos, and VCRs. Asians were getting rich. Everything was wonderful. Then somebody attacked the baht. Currency traders snuck up behind
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