I note on Rev Shark's blog on Real Money a blogger wanting to know how to short Trim Spa after learning of Anna Nicole Smith's death. I couldn't help but be a bit saddened that in the wake of a tragic death someone is looking to profit from it. That's the world we live in though, and I suppose it is not much different than shorting a stock because lots of folks are defaulting on their loans. A financial tragedy for those folks.
I don't know much about ANS other than the titillating stuff (Playboy Playmate of the Year, topless waitress/dancer? and her marriage to the profile of my next husband, a very rich, elderly man and the subsequent legal battle over inheritance). I did stumble upon her reality show once, and it was akin to watching a car accident or a train wreck--the unfolding of what you were watching was so horrible, but you could not avert your attention. Yet even with this embarrassing mesmerization, I asked, "How can they put stuff like this on TV?" It's the same content machine that brings us the OJ Simpson, "If I did It" concept.
We're mesmerized by this stuff--that is why we have such content.
Culture gone awry. (Note meaning to sound moralizing.)
2 comments:
Why is shorting bad companies ghoulish? Why is shorting any company somehow wrong? Selling borrowed shares has been around a long time-pretty much since there have been stock markets.
Ann Nicole was herself a arguably a pretty ghoulish person. Given that we will all die someday, and that 153,000 people die every day, I would argue that of the somewhere within that 153,000 people there are a few people we will miss more then Miss Smith.
...don't even get me started on the mortgage crowd.
And you are so moralizing - or at least being oddly maudlin. LOL
I don't have any problems with shorting anything--in fact, I don't understand why folks are against the practice though I'll admit that the mechanics are troublesome that someone is lending MY shares to short sellers. People can say what they want about the Overstocks CEO, he has a spectacular presentation on short selling and shares clearance.
Rather, I was just trying to recognize the small hypocrisy in which I was engaging--criticizing someone who wanted to make money off of her death.
Now we see that Ms. Gabor (at 90) and her 23 year's her junior husband Otto (at 67) are mixed up in this too. She from having known Smith's former husband, and he from having know Smith in an intimate way for 10 years.
The lives people lead!
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