Trading places

The world is watching in shock and bewilderment as capitalism collapses in a flop. Every day, television cameras bring images of investors gaping at electronic boards showing their fortunes plummeting.

The mood is gloomy, but if you were up to it, you might appreciate how the 'financial tsunami' is changing everything for people who believed they had all the answers. And it's happening overnight. There can't be a better time for connoisseurs of irony.

Friends (such as investment bankers) are looking like villains, and enemies (such as the public sector) are suddenly looking like good people.

Heroes of India's IT economy, N R Narayana Murthy included, are now arguing for more controls. A year ago, they would have laughed at the idea of the government running businesses. Who would have believed they would ever wake up to the dangers of letting private corporations manage the world?

At least two families, both with Bangalore connections, have killed themselves as the markets wiped out their fortunes. A man in Chicago, an IIT graduate, pulled out a gun and shot his wife, three sons, mother-in-law and himself. In Mumbai, another family got into a suicide pact to find a way out of the money calamity. Such is the extent of distress, and it is gripping the globe.

People who put all their money in the markets and enjoyed the good life are today worse off than the poor. They are killing themselves like farmers in debt. The class that mocked farm loan waivers is today out with a begging bowl, pleading for a government bailout.

So how did we reach here? A basic truth everyone forgot was that the stock market is all about gambling and speculation. Various factors contribute to giving it more respectability than it deserves. The government talking proudly about a booming stock market, for instance, sends out the signal that it can't just be a game of dice.

A Ficci survey in December last year predicted the Sensex would touch 25,000 in two years. And its respondents were CFOs, investment bankers, mutual fund managers, and asset management companies. You won't hear a squeak out of them today.

The small investor balks in disbelief when banks cite testimonials for safety from some "reputed independent agency". Many of yesterday's "reputed" financial institutions are worth nothing today.

ICICI Bank, India's most aggressive financial institution, is sending SMSes to tell its depositors their money is safe. Their vice-president is writing mail to its customers, asking them not to panic. In the normal course, you couldn't get past their call centre executive. But here they are, the big bosses, talking to you with their hands folded!

At least two camps are watching the capitalist misery with some satisfaction. The communists, who always believed America's free market model was flawed. And the Islamists, who believe their tormentor is justly being tormented.