Buddy, Can You Spare A Trillion

By TAD BARTIMUS

I was in no mood to chat when my friend stopped by.
"What are you so happy about?" I grumbled, hardly bothering to look up.

I was on the Internet checking the stock market, trying to shade my eyes from the glare of all those red arrows pointing down.

"Just wanted to say I'm outta here," he said. "Gonna take the big bird and fly away. Can't wait!"

"Where to?" I asked, wanting him to leave me alone in my misery.

"Vegas! Throw the dice, play the one-armed bandit, get myself some money! I'm feeling lucky!"

I groaned. His optimism and enthusiasm reminded me of a similar conversation last year, when I was the high roller because my tech stocks were soaring through the NASDAQ roof. I was so gleeful about my prosperous Wall Street portfolio that I was remodeling the bathroom and dreaming of a Caribbean cruise. When he told me he'd rather take his chances in Las Vegas than in the stock market, I'd warned him: "Hey pal, you'd better get on board 'cause the gravy train is leaving the station."
I offered the unsolicited advice that he was foolish to pass up a long-running bull market just to play risky games of chance in a casino.

My friend demurred. No thanks, he said, he preferred to keep his money in short-term CDs, a regular savings account paying 4 percent, and cash. I'd made fun of him last year, called him an old fuddy-duddy. I was a satisfied investor who'd just bought Yahoo! for $172 a share and felt lucky to get it. I must have been insufferable.

"No thanks," said my kinder, gentler friend. "I'd rather keep my money under the mattress, take a little out and have a great time in Vegas than watch a graph line go up and down. Besides, one of these days I'm gonna hit the jackpot. Somebody's got to, right?"

I didn't want his Las Vegas odds; I thought mine were a sure thing. Besides, I had Louis Rukeyser, Alan Greenspan and Bill Gates on my side. Like half the country, I was getting compulsive, channel-surfing CNBC, CNN and PBS for the latest market quotes.

Then my dot.com investments began to slide like the deck chairs on the Titanic. Greed turned to fear the day Intel tanked. Roughly $4 trillion has now disappeared from investors' portfolios since my friend took his trip to Las Vegas last March. Some of it was mine. Like millions of Americans, I no longer feel comfortable. I feel scared.
President George W. Bush thinks a tax cut averaging $180 a person will kick-start the economy. Alan Greenspan believes slashing interest rates will resuscitate the bulls. I can't imagine that either effort is enough to save my Yahoo! stock - now down to about $20 a share.
"Don't panic," my broker friend says. "Take the long view."
"Hang in there," my stock analyst friend says. "It may get worse before it gets better."

Worse? How can it get worse?

"Easy," said my newspaper reporter friend. "Remember the Great Depression?"

I wished my Vegas-bound neighbor a great trip and gave him 10 bucks to bet on black. Watching him walk away, I was jealous: he was going to have a lot more fun losing his money than I'd had losing mine.


© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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