by Don Hall

The stock market is just white collar gambling.

The best sports bettors don’t use their emotional ties to a team to place their wagers. The best — meaning the ones who win more often than lose — use a bit of voodoo science to determine how much and on which team, fighter, or horse to put money on. The book and subsequent film Moneyball breaks it down pretty cleanly. Look at the statistics. Check the health of the players involved. When you get some insider info — say a running back has an undisclosed injury or a source indicates that a key player is juicing — you take advantage of that info and get the edge.

The stock market is no different. Those who buy stock out of emotion lose. Those who buy stock out of allegiance to the money and the inside info win.

Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler, Dianne Feinstein and James Inhofe must’ve read Naomi Klein’s 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. 

Klein makes the case that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of "shock therapy". This centers on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or upheavals) to establish controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are excessively distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an adequate response, and resist effectively.

On a minuscule level, this practice is seen in the price-gouging of essentials during times of crisis. The tripling of drug prices as need is overtly demonstrated and the fuckery of buying up all the hand sanitizer in an area with intent to sell it back to those terrified of pandemic for a hefty profit.

While it is conjecture on my part, I’m quite certain that these four Senators are not alone in their insider trading cash grab. I’m confident to believe that most who knew concretely of the potential effects of COVID-19 and the possible shuttering of cities to halt the spread (“flatten the curve”) before it was made public found a way to profit from it.

The Shock Doctrinaires are like sports bettors combined with the Paul Reiser character in Aliens. Not Max Von Sydow Ming the Merciless evil but sniveling, cowardly Burke, locking Ripley in the room with the creature in hopes that she becomes a parasitic host so he can profit on it.

It is unlikely that Richard Burr is going to jail. The fabulously rich only go to jail if they coerce Hollywood actors into blowjobs and once in awhile rape someone. I mean, we couldn’t even effectively impeach the Donald, so I’m certain Burr & Co. aren’t seeing prison time.

In Vegas, we have what is known as the Banned Patron Report. This is a list of sports bettors who are either known or suspected to have been gaming the system in some way. A banned patron is no longer allowed to bet on any games.

Perhaps the stock market should have something like that.

And perhaps also a bit of the Old School Vegas where these four get taken out into an alley and beaten to death, dismembered, and buried 80 miles out in the desert.