don't bet on it
I don't usually feel much sympathy with people who can count their fortune in billions of pounds (or euros, which lately means the same thing).
All the same, when Adolf Merckle threw himself under a train the other day because a very large 'short' bet had backfired, it got my attention for a minute or two while reading the story. Here is a man in his mid-seventies, a billionaire, who by any normal standards ought to have got everything he wants out of his life, who actually found it necessary to end it in this very messy and socially damaging way because he had bet the farm on VW doing badly, and lost.
You have to ask yourself : WHY ?
On any given day, and especially during the SAD season, I can think of a million reasons to commit suicide, but money is not and never has been one of them. In Japan, this type of executive suicide is quite commonplace (Japan Railways East sends the bill for train service disruption straight to the jumpee's family) and is usually described as being an 'apology', but it doesn't appear that Mr Merckle said sorry to anybody before he jumped. He just valued his life as worthless because a gamble had failed. How terribly sad, how terribly shameful, that is. Any OAP who soldiers on from week to week on the pittance our government pays as the basic state pension has more guts than this guy and deserves our sympathy far more than he does.
Anyway, let's hope that there are not too many other people around who take themselves and their money so seriously, because on January 16th the FSA is going to lift the ban on short selling that it imposed amid the mayhem of last September. This will allow exactly the kind of behaviour that led to Mr M's fatal leap to resume in London, allowing registered bets to be made once more on the collapse of our banks and businesses. According to the FT, one hedge fund specialist greeted this news with the exclamation 'Hallelujah'. Let's just hope that in the long run, it's not a cold and a broken Hallelujah - as per Adolf Merckle.
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