Why do we put up with this? The whole business of international finance is dumbfounding. These damn business cycles—we don’t know whether to lie around the Riviera, clipping the coupons on bonds, or sit around the kitchen table, clipping the coupons in newspapers. Investments cause us to act silly. One minute we’re loading our possessions on top of the Ford and fleeing the dust bowl. The next minute we’re buying dust futures on the Chicago Commodity Exchange. This shit-shower of money flying around the world . . . This fiscal El Niño blowing certificate-of-deposit droughts to one place and no-load mutual fund floods to someplace else . . . These cash storms lofting Hindenburg high-techs into the sky . . . These speculatory lightning strikes sending transportation and utilities down in flames. What’s in it for us? We ordinary toilers at the cubicle farm: Why don’t we rise up? Why don’t we get rid of the capitalist system and replace it with something that’s nicer and more predictable, and gives everybody an even break? “What,” I asked all the Wall Street people I interviewed, “does the investment industry give to society?” But this time they had an answer. “Liquidity,” said the $2 billion money manager. “Liquidity,” said the investment banker who’d described how men’s thoughts were on pecuniary B-girls. “Liquidity,” said the other investment banker who’d told me things could move stupidly. “Liquidity,” said the Irish specialist broker. “It provides liquidity,” said David. Liquidity is the Wall Street word for having things you can do with your money and being able to do them. Liquidity is the essence of the free market. Men with more time to explain themselves might have said something like, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and Ka-ching!, Ka-ching!, Ka-ching!” If we’re going to have freedom and the money to enjoy it, we have to put up with the stuff in this chapter. At least that’s what the people who run the stuff in this chapter say. Which brings me to the only reason anybody ever reads a chapter like this: What should you do with your money?
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