May 31, 2006
America Wins in Vietnam;
Commies Go Wall Street
It looks
like we may win the Vietnam War after all. It’s just too bad we didn’t
save ourselves 40-some-odd years of aggravation by withdrawing our
troops in 1966 and sending a bunch of stockbrokers over there instead.
Well,
better late than never. Today, Ho Chi Minh City is home to a burgeoning
stock market – burgeoning in the sense that only 37 companies are
listed. But it has 50,000 investors and market capitalization of 32
trillion dong, which is pretty impressive even after you realize that’s
only $1.94 billion.
Perhaps
even more impressive is the level of sophistication of Vietnamese
investors. Consider Nguyen Quoc Truong, a 49-year-old restaurant owner
who tells Agence France Presse what he knows about prudent investing –
much of it apparently learned from his teenage nephew:
"The market
goes down when many people sell, and it rises when many people buy. I
choose the biggest company. It's safer. With a lottery ticket, you have
less chance to win.”
I’d say
that puts him at least on a par with most of the Wall Street crowd, not
to mention the fact that he doesn’t know all the stuff they would be
better off forgetting – like how you’re supposed to panic and sell all
your stock whenever a bomb goes off in Iraq or a George Clooney movie
comes out.
Communist
stock markets. What a fantastic concept. We got rid of most of these
people by building stockpiles of missiles they couldn’t afford, but the
hangers-on who annoyingly remain? Securities and exchange for everyone.
Communism either has to collapse under the weight of its own economic
implausibility or just slowly give way to the only economic system that
makes any sense whatsoever – free-market capitalism.
Why would
the commies let this kind of thing get started? And after they worked so
hard to keep it at bay during The War America Lost? Seems pretty simple
to me. The fall of South Vietnam to the commies must have seemed like an
awfully pyrrhic victory 16 years later when the Soviet patron state
suddenly ceased to exist, leaving all the little client commies to fend
for themselves. Everyone has reacted to the fall of the giant in
different ways. In Pyongyang, Kim Jung Il sends his people to
torture/death camps, puts out crazy missives and enriches uranium. In
Havana, Fidel acts as a mentor to up-and-coming loonies like Venezuela’s
Hugo Chavez, while trying in vain to keep his nation’s only true assets
from becoming Yankees. The Chinese? They’re just trying to get revenge
against Jack Bauer.
But in
‘Nam, it becomes increasingly apparently that America lost the battle
but is winning the war. They didn’t establish a stock market in 2000
because Vietnamese TV needed an excuse to run numbers across the bottom
of the screen. They did it because they understand Asia’s economic
potential, and they want in. And they know that you cash in on economic
opportunity by following America’s lead. No more help from Brezhnev and
Gorbachev? Then come on in, Buffett and Icahn!
Of course,
the usual hand-wringers are concerned. It seems that many Vietnamese
investors see the stock market as a form of gambling, and are “playing”
the market rather than conducting reasoned analysis and investing with a
long-term strategy in mind.
And this is different from America how? Has anyone tuned in to Bulls
and Bears lately?
“I like
this play, Jonathan! I think it has the potential to be hot!”
“It’s a
dog, Jonas! What do you think, Wayne?”
“I might
like it! I’m not sure. Did you know I was on M*A*S*H?”
No country
that holds Celebrity Stock Pick contests should be lecturing Vietnam
about the trading habits of its investors. These people are communists
for goodness sakes. They’re supposed to act like financial neophytes!
We’re capitalists, and yet for some reason we still care what Trapper
John, M.D. thinks of the tech sector. (I hear Klinger is a little heavy
in women’s apparel. Think about that one.)
It’s good
to see communism waving the white flag of surrender in Vietnam. It can
never co-exist with capitalism, and no self-respecting Stalinist can
resist forever getting a piece of the action on concentrated frozen
orange juice. If they can resist the temptation to go the Vietnamese
Idol route, there’s no limit to what they can achieve.
© 2006 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Click here to talk to our writers and
editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.
To e-mail feedback about this column,
click here. If you enjoy this writer's
work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry
it.
This is Column # DFK30.
Request permission to publish here.
|