Oh dear, oh dear oh dear:
But shorting Northern Rock destroys a company, puts people out of work and annihilates the investments of citizens and pension funds.
The shorting of stock does not destroy a company (not unless they\’ve been putting up stock for loans to it, at least). So what on earth is he talking about?
It’s the predicable old blame game. Someone must be to blame for the woes of Northern Rock, preferably located in London to sustain the myth that the source of all northern problems is located south of the Watford gap. Try Orwell for perennial illumination:
“There is nevertheless a real difference between North and South, and there is at least a tinge of truth in that picture of Southern England as one enormous Brighton inhabited by lounge-lizards. For climatic reasons the parasitic divi-dend-drawing class tend to settle in the South. In a Lancashire cotton-town you could probably go for months on end without once hearing an ‘educated’ accent, whereas there can hardly be a town in the South of England where you could throw a brick without hitting the niece of a bishop.”
http://www.george-orwell.org/North_And_South/0.html
It’s saying: “If you call a bookmaker and place a bet against the team I want to win, you’re a bad person.”
Of course, what’s left unsaid is that he’ll not be able to place a bet at all unless there’s someone to take the opposite wager.
Even he who buys, at fire-sale prices, the homes, autos, jewelry, etc., etc., of those in distress is not the cause of their ruin but merely the agent through which they are spared realizing even lower prices.