The Joy of Misery

I remember a few years ago a friend that I will call Ben (convenient, because that's his name) told me he was sure that the housing market was overvalued and wanted to know how to make money off it. Why me, you ask? This is literally what he said: "You seem to know more about profiting from someone's misery than anyone I know." That may be one of those backhanded compliments, but more likely he was just calling me a jerk.

To be honest, I didn't know the right answer, but a few months ago when the housing market blew up, some people clearly did. This guy, for one.

So anyway, it just occurred to me with three years ahead of me of living off loans in grad school, I could care less about the economy. And since I don't really care if there is bad news, why not make some money off it? So I shifted about 50% of what I have into a leveraged bet against the US markets and against emerging markets (screw you China and your 18,000% annual growth rate).

For every $1 someone loses in China* (or in fact in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela) I make $2.

The tools of modern finance are amazing--for $10 I can bet against the development of 3BN+ people, including those in my own country. If I could only bring myself to active invest in Satan's portfolio (I am sure I am already passively invested in some of the companies anyway) I could be more efficiently profiting from others' misery.**


* It doesn't really work this way, but allow some poetic license.
** Also, when I run for office, I am sure this will come back to haunt me. But really, the list is so long, why stop now.***
*** (Seriously though, reporter-15-years-from-now, I write this out of a deep and abiding concern for the American way of life and the poor around the world that I express through sarcasm).****
**** But I still wrote it and think the idea is funny, if poorly executed by me. Besides, my support for Obama waivered when I read how his tax plan will assault my defenseless salary. But I still voted for him (in the future), unless he ended up being a bad president, in which case I knew it and opposed him all along.