Stocks Don't Cheat People...

It’s time for us to ban all investments.

We need to shutter the New York Stock Exchange, layoff everyone from the American Stock Exchange, and retrain stock brokers and analysts for exciting new careers in the food service industry.

I say that because there is simply too much cheating in our financial industry.

Such rule-bending has received celebrity endorsement over the last few years from such high-profile offenders as Martha Stewart.

In Martha’s case, I still don’t understand how it’s a crime to sell your stock in a company when your friend, who happens to run the company, tells you things aren’t going well.

For example, if my friend at the Wal Mart knew that the price of a cordless drill was going to be reduced by 75 cents next week, and he kept his mouth shut when I told him of my plans to buy a drill this afternoon, well, he wouldn’t be getting any more Christmas cards from me.

But maybe I just don’t get the whole idea of stock market investing.

After all, I still own 200 shares of Enron that I purchased a couple of years ago using my “bounce” theory of economics.

My theory was that a company as huge and integral as Enron would eventually rebound.

So I bought a couple hundred shares at $9 each.

(This was long before I became a newspaper writer, back when I used to actually have money.)

Last week, Enron was trading at 20 cents a share.

It bounced like fresh Play-Doh.

Enough said about my investing prowess.

Now, it seems that United States Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is on the griddle over a Martha-esque escapade.

According to reports, Dr. Frist (yes, he’s a surgeon, which means he honed his budget-cutting techniques on appendix patients years ago) sold stock in his family’s hospital company, HCA Inc., just before the stocks tanked.

Martha got a heads-up from a friend, and she went to jail.

Dr. Frist probably got the inside scoop over apple pie at mom’s house one Sunday.

So you have two pretty smart people, well known in the U.S., who have allegedly been caught with their hands on the “sell” button.

(Although, in another indictment of the American society, some of you are scratching your heads saying “Bill who?” regarding the fourth most powerful man in the world’s most powerful country, while everyone knows the name and story of a lady whose most notable accomplishment is a perfect pineapple upside down cake.)

I’ve decided that maybe the gun control nuts are right.

They have insisted for decades that handgun murders shouldn’t be blamed on the person actually pulling the trigger.

It’s the gun manufacturers and sporting goods stores that should be hanged.

Using their logic (an oxymoron if ever there was one), Frist and Martha shouldn’t be the scapegoats.

It’s those nasty old stock manufacturers and traders.

Let’s go after them.

Oh sure, you’ll have lobbyists and stock lovers like the soon-to-be-formed National Stocks Association claiming “stocks don’t cheat people, people cheat people,” but such rhetoric doesn’t seem to be doing the NRA any good, either.

I say that if we eliminate stocks and the stock market, there won’t be anymore stock cheating.

(I just re-read that sentence, and it actually sounded logical, which scares me.)

Until the federal legislature tires of pointing fingers at each other over who is to blame for a category four hurricane and enacts valuable legislation outlawing the trading of stocks, we’ll have to look out for each other.

I don’t care what the Stock Exchange Commission says.

Friends don’t let friends buy United Air Lines.

But if you insist on playing the stock market, then I have 900 leftover Bethlehem Steel shares I’d like to offer you.

And don’t listen to those financial idiots who might tell you that Bethlehem Steel went out of business two years ago.

I still think it’s going to bounce.