Confusion

I decided against the options approach to shorting the Dow index. A put would have cost $1400, and to me that meant the index would have to fall 140 dollars before I made any money. I will continue to look for opportunities to sell the future contracts.

I also have to find some other investment opportunities besides the highly speculative leveraged types. I can think of many stocks to sell short, like Daimler-Chrysler, but what can I invest in and hope to earn gains? I'm thinking about water. I'm afraid a lot of people and places are going to run out of water, and people who have water are going to find out it has bad stuff in it. Companies like Hinkley and Schmidt and Culligan's come to mind. But I'm afraid I'll find out these companies have been brought out by big corporations like Bechtel and Suez (and Nestle's). I don't feel morally comfortable investing in the big internationals. Their profit imperatives lead them to do bad things. I'll try to learn more.

Janett and I were talking this morning about evil in the world, in particular she was talking about the Janjaweed militias in Darfur. I told her it was right to feel compassion and sadness, but not to become depressed, because we must remain strong. As you probably know it is my sense that things are going to get worse (a lot worse) before they get better. My imagination conjured up Jerry Fawell and Pat Robertson announcing that the next catastrophe to befall us will have been divine retribution on our nation for tolerating the homosexual agenda.

In fact the catastrophes to come are not God's doing. They're ours. If the avian flu runs amok should we blame God, or should we regret spending 150 billion dollars killing Iraquis instead of investing that money in our health care system?