Re: What does it mean?

On Mar 4, 10:30 pm, Bob Casanova <nos...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2009 18:23:38 -0600, the following appeared in
talk.origins, posted by "[M]adman" <g...@xxxxxxxxxx>:

Ray Martinez wrote:
Los Angeles Times, front page headline, Tuesday, March 3, 2009:

"AIG bailout causes faith to plummet"

The ensuing article says the latest round of government bailout money
(30 billion) given to the insurance giant caused a great number of
investors to throw in the towel. On Monday, March 2, the Dow Jones
industrial average lost a whopping 299.64 points.

Question: In context what does the word "faith" mean in the headline?
Causes faith to plummet? Surely the head line jests. This is just another
dishonest reporter trying to be cleaver.

Nah, he's not that sharp.

There is no "faith" involved in the
decision to pull out of the stock market. Because only greed makes that
choice.

Fear of losing one's life savings is "greed" to you?

<snip rant>

Indeed, it's a foolish oversimplification to paint a picture of
financial market behaviour in terms of greed. The usual competent
analysis sees it as competition between greed and fear, rather
randomly associated with the bull and the bear, most particularly, I
think, by people who never met a bear.

For that matter, much trading is not done with people's own money, and
their personal gain may or may not depend on the outcome of the trade,
in which case their motives aren't greed and fear, but the abstract
desires to increase their capital but not to take a loss.

Incidentally, short-term trading is for the birds.

.

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