I thought that it might be worthwhile to pay a small visit to the world of the rich and powerful, AKA capitalists or ruling class. This piece written by a hedge fund manager describes, in a very casual style, his meeting with members of the CIA, not just any, but the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, and four others ("five gorillas built like brick shithouses") who I gather are something like bodyguards.
I don't know a whole lot about hedge fund managers, but I do know that they manage the money of the rich, very influential, and well-connected. Despite the name "hedge fund", these people often place high-risk bets for their clients at the Wall Street casino using borrowed funds. They do this because the rewards are often very great for everyone involved. Risk is greatly reduced because they, the fund managers, have access to powerful people that can influence the outcome of their bets as well as access to valuable insider information. As we have seen, when their bets go terribly wrong, they merely have their powerful friends and servants in the government bail them out. Hence, we, the people, are stuck with the bill.
The article provides a good illustration of the access that these fund managers have to the powerful and knowledgeable, in this case, to Mr CIA, as I mentioned above. Then you may have a queasy feeling when you read this:
The long term outlook for supplies of food, natural resources, and energy is becoming so severe that the CIA is now viewing it as a national security threat. Some one third of emerging market urban populations are poor, or about 1.5 billion souls, and when they get hungry, angry, and politically or religiously inspired, Americans have to worry. This will be music to the ears of the hedge funds that have been stampeding into food, commodities, and energy since March. It is also welcome news to George Soros, who has quietly bought up enough agricultural land in Argentina to create his own medium sized country.You will notice how the rich even bet on the suffering of the poor to make themselves richer, and it is "music to [their] ears". Of course, when he writes that with so many people suffering, "Americans have to worry", he really means that the American ruling class has to worry. And in the next paragraph he reports on learning about the fact that US currency is in danger of losing its value. This is another piece of "red meat" for his investors ("profits [on bets] from falling Treasury bond prices!")
After mentioning a few other tidbits from Mr. CIA that don't appear to have any investment value, he fantasizes about how wonderful it would be to have access to all their CIA data and to manage their pension fund with this knowledge--a hedge fund manager's wet dream!.
Isn't the internet wonderful?