There are no two ways about it, the economy is in the shitter. Of course, there are countless articles online about why this is happening and what we can do about it, and since I have never taken anything that even resembles an economics class I will not try to tackle any of that. Instead, I will be offering you a glimpse of humor in this dark hour that I’ve affectionately donned the nameless distressed financial worker.
The logical question you might be asking right now is: “Who is this distressed financial worker?” And here’s the kicker, nobody knows, hence the nameless. For some reason, every day that the market tanks (which happens to be just about every day recently) all the major news outlets decide that the best way to really capture how bad the day truly was is to slap the picture of a nameless distressed financial worker on their front page. Seriously. Take a look, it won’t take long. It’s a pandemic. CNN. Yahoo! MSNBC. Nobody is immune. It’s pretty easy to spot one of these boys, his hands are usually up around his head and he has either a completely devastated or totally blank look on his face, depending on how that particular nameless individual chooses to convey his daily grief.
My favorite part is that there is never any explanation as to who this guy is, where he is working, or if he is even related to the market. Yet he appears to know something about finances, is upset about it, and you should be too. One might think that there are better ways to convey these difficult times to the masses, say a graph, or some actual numbers, and that’s just off the top of my head.
I have written several posts in the past about how poor our major news outlets are in terms of conveying real information to the masses but in this case I really think they hit it on the head. So bring it on, at least while I watch my money swirl around the drain into oblivion I can take solace in laughing at those who are losing even more money.
-Ritt
Funny you should write this article. Just the other day I was thinking about this scenario. I mean, there must be hundreds of these guys a day stressing beyond belief at the market. How do they decide just who makes the cut? I mean, the asian guy in the middle of that picture is a sure winner, and I don’t think anyone will dispute that (although I honestly can’t tell if he’s happy, laughing, or angry – for sake of the article I’ll assume the latter). But for everyone else, what is the tryout process like? How many picture a day do ‘they’ sort through? Who are ‘they?’ In times like these, above questions need to be addressed.
All valid points Gottlieb. I would expect you to know some of the answers to those critical questions are you are somewhat related to the financial crisis. In fact, I think that you should find out who makes these decisions and submit a picture of yourself. Hope all is well.