A frozen shoulder to the bear market
Colloquial English has at least three comparative expressions for actions of considerable simplicity: as easy as falling off a bike, as easy as falling down stairs, and as easy as falling off a log. I shall go near no logs from now on. Four years ago, my left shoulder was the fractured outcome of a bike ride. Last year, a thoughtless cleaner polished the wooden stairs to my office the day before I chose to amble down them in stocking feet. Once, I thought a rotator cuff was a helicopter part. Not anymore. Since both of them have now been painfully and expensively repaired, I now know they are stretchy bits that hold the arm to the shoulder.
After the operations, I suffered from a 'frozen shoulder' which my orthopedist told me was because I scarred easily, which he suspected was the result of my Celtic/Norse origins. He did not know why, but he'd seen it several times in people from our neck of the waves. I immediately deduced that if your ancestors spent four millennia chasing each other with broad axes, long swords and heavy shillelaghs, then rapid scarring was a definite survival trait.
It makes one think about the dubious debts we owe our ancestors and the genes they leave us. I have freckles, which allow the tepid and aqueous northern sun through to enough of my skin to synthesize vitamin D. I can digest milk by the gallon, a trait that allowed my ancestors to get protein and vitamins during the long dark winter, while most of humanity, blessed with happier climes, stops digesting lactose not long after weaning.
I have Japanese friends who can neither drink milk nor alcohol, which is fine for a career in the Salvation Army for someone scared of brucellosis, and well may have other advantages, although frankly I'm hard put to see what. I have Caribbean friends with sickle cell trait, which apparently protects them from malaria, while mosquitoes treat my freckles as clearly demarcated landing zones.
Humanity is a genetic deck of cards, continually being shuffled through sexual activity, which is thus good for us as a species, as well as fun. As geneticists check out our genes they find an incredible range of attributes that are accentuated or repressed according to the deck dealt us by our parents. It follows that we do not all get dealt the aces. But then aces are not always high.
There may not be a gene for investor relations, but there are certainly genes for ire, just as there are for cooperativeness which is surely well expressed in such a helpful and selfless pursuit as investor relations. Over the long term, in most human societies cooperativeness and geniality will thrive. The combination of alert omniscience and happiness to oblige that together form the genetic template of the renaissance persons who make up the investor relations profession, are clearly the way of the future. On the other hand there are times and places in history when it is useful to a society for genes to pull together some giant irascible psychopath to be set on enemies. When such a Samson's purpose is served, over time his more peaceful and cooperative neighbors will either keep the peace by forgetting to warn him that there is a bear in that cave when he pokes his head in, or, in the spirit of cooperation, they will gang up and sort him out some night when he is asleep.
However the effects of shuffling genes may be replicated on a larger scale. As the number of public companies surges, and the market gets bigger and bigger, aren't we creating some form of corporate gene pool with Darwinian characteristics? How else could we possibly make sense of the constant mergers and demergers, the fluid interchange of equity shares, brands and subsidiaries?
Each shuffle produces new orgasmic combinations of characteristics and assets, management styles and financing options. Of course it is early stages yet for the primordial ooze of economic life. Slime molds function as individual cells until they meet the right circumstances and then they split and go their separate ways, a bit like the old ITT that struggled so hard to join with everything and then happily divested itself into almost unrecognizable heirs.
Some corporate types may not like being compared with bacteria, but this is pure prejudice. Thanks to reshuffled genes, bacteria can thrive pretty much everywhere from the icy tip of Everest to the sulphurous Stygian depths of volcanic eruptions at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. And what is more, bacteria are not sexist and operate on free market principles. They live forever, reproducing by fission, but occasionally deigning to exchange precious genetic information on a basis of mutual gain.
The colorful history of biological life is written in adversity. The occasional asteroid pops in to stir up the oceanic soup, or an ice age wanders along to test the heliophilic has-beens to destruction. Then the elephant that grows itself a fur coat plays happy families, until the Cro-Magnon man who wants one off the shelf instead of growing it turns up with his high-tech spear.
So when the big crash comes, and the stocks plummet, and a cold glacier-like chill glissades down from the frozen shoulder of Mount Dow Jones, do not be upset. This is good for the corporate life form in the longer run. Be proud to be part of history.
The Speculator