COLUMN: The root of all evil
Momma always told me to steer clear of three and four-letter words, but it’s become clear this is the only way to get rich quick.
No, I haven’t decided to give up all my morals and become a lying politician, nor have I decided to become a comedian. My newest pursuit is to become rich – fast.
I’ve been exposed to just about every get-rich-quick scheme imaginable.
“It’s easy, all you have to do is take your Swiss army knife, jab it in your side, twist it around a little bit and pull really hard until your kidney comes out. Then put it in a Ziploc bag, add a little water for flavoring, and sell it on eBay. Then, I’ll get a percentage of the profit and so will you, and so will everyone else under you. And the best part is, the government won’t even have to know about it.”
Strangely enough, I have an affinity for my internal organs, and getting busted for tax fraud has never been a hobby of mine, so these schemes have always bothered me.
But still, even the remote possibility of getting rich without doing a lot of work appeals to me, as it does to most people in this country.
Unfortunately the economic masterminds of this country – you know, the ones who are so smart they couldn’t see the housing market fall through – don’t see much financial benefit from yet another useless college student soon to graduate in PR, so I’ve had to set my sight on other things: three and four-letter words.
If you’ve ever opened up the business or money section of a newspaper, you’ve likely faced a series of strange numbers and symbols that look like the schematics for a nuclear bomb. Oddly, it has nothing to do with bombs – though there is still plenty of mass destruction. It’s actually a market report on how stocks are doing.
This was where I was introduced to the three and four-letter words. In the world of stocks, apparently nobody can say the real name of a company – these were the same kids that had code names like Gimpy Leg Tim for their top secret clubs growing up – so every company has an abbreviated symbol of a few letters for their name.
This got me to thinking about investing in stocks. As I watched the news and checked out potential companies to invest stock in, I realized I had no clue how stocks work, but I’ll try to explain it as best as I can.
Stocks are like “American Idol.” Nobody really likes it but since there’s nothing better to do, you may as well join in. The whole scene takes place in a crowded room in a jam-packed city, with millions of people around the country watching – though they don’t really know what for.
There is an announcer, though he doesn’t look nearly as preppy as Ryan Seacrest, and somewhere – probably locked in a minuscule room in the back of some New York deli eating spicy meatball sandwiches and trying to avoid indigestion – are the judges of the stock market, mostly rejected economists and former secretaries of the Clinton administration. These are the gurus who decide which stocks are winning, and they assign arbitrary numbers and criticism to instill fear in all the contestants and fans out there.
Every so often there’s a vote to see which stock is winning. I think people even bust out their cell phones and start texting “I luv GEDU” to 666. Once the votes have been tallied up, the final stats are in, and the announcer closes the day by banging on a bell on some balcony while half the people cheer and throw confetti and the other half sulk off to the bar to get drunk and slit their wrists. Morbid isn’t it?
At the end of each quarter, the show, so to speak, ends, and a winner is declared, which doesn’t matter because starting the next day there is yet another contest, just like “American Idol.” There’s almost as many “American Idol” winners as there are “NOW That’s What I Call Music” albums. Bottom line, nobody with any ounce of sanity really cares that much.
But there are a lot of things about the stock market I don’t get. Like, what’s with the bell? Wouldn’t it be more impressive if there were some giant sumo with a sledgehammer that would charge after a gong the size of a display screen on Times Square and smack it to end the trading day? There’d be nothing weak about our economy then.
And what’s with the whole bull market and bear market thing? I think it’s a conspiracy by Chicagoans who are trying to infiltrate the New York sports teams by getting everyone to root for the Bears or the Bulls. You can always tell the economy is in trouble when either team is doing well.
Despite how confusing the stock market is, I realize it’s my way to get rich quick. I just have to choose the right three or four-letter combos to invest in. Not entirely sure which to choose, I thought about pulling random letters out of the Scrabble box and looking to see if that stock exists, or closing my eyes and pointing at a stock in the newspaper. No matter what I choose, anything has got to be better than what I have been doing.
You see, up to this point, my portfolio has consisted of all the wrong three or four letter words: USU, IRS, GOV, UTAH, DEMS (my stock plummets every time they get into office and raise taxes), BKG, REM and SNES. All of these seem to steal my money away. But I’ve got a plan to change it all.
The way I figure is each year in April I submit my taxes, giving the government money, and thereby buying stock in the federal government. The idea of stock is to build up the company and assuredly there is nothing as big as the federal government. That being the case, my investment should have appreciated by now so I will cash out, earning millions of dollars, and retire to somewhere in the Caymans sipping a Kool-Aid and trying to avoid getting pinched by crabs.
And with all this extra money sitting around, I’ll have no more need to invest in the IRS stock, so I guess I won’t have to pay taxes anymore. Talk about a killer tax return.
Seth Hawkins is a senior majoring in public relations. He is about to write a book called “How to Survive on the Lam with the IRS on your Tail: A Memoir.” Questions and comments can be sent to him at seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu