capitalism *is* fun :-)

I ran down to the nearest convenience store to pickup a few small things. When I was about to pay with my credit card, I have noticed a nice announcement: “We only accept credit cards issued by X bank”. Apparently, in the past days, the bank that offered the POS terminal for the store, decided not to accept any Visa/Mastercard cards, but to only cards issued by them. I bet people will immediately get a new credit card with some obscure bank just because at some convenience store they will only accept *their* cards. When a bank has like 0.00000000000001% of market share, it can force people to only use their cards …. or not.

I wonder if losing all the fees they got so far for processing any Visa / Mastercard will be replaced by perhaps one (or none) person that will get a card from them.

I love this Kamikaze way of doing business: You are do business with us, or die. Oh well … I won’t miss them once they leave the market like many other banks using crappy tactics.

I was in their marketing department, perhaps I would have slashed the fee charged to the convenience store by a bit, in exchange of letting me advertise my products in their store. 

 
Reading through today’s news, something very interesting caught my attention.
Commercial prospector Ma’aden has invested $5.5 billion in equipment and development to prospects the sands of Saudi Arabia … for gold!

It appears that the sand in those deserts is nothing more then the topping of a huge sandwich consisting of various level of desired and expensive commodities, such as oil and gold. I wonder what’s next? Uranium?

People worrying that they will hit the bottom of the oil barrel soon, and run out of the good stuff, should rest assured. The bottom of the barrel is actually made from gold. They do have to sustain all the good life that was once built on crude oil, isn’t it?

This is a bit of an older news, but I loved it:
“Angry investors have attacked the Karachi Stock Exchange in Pakistan, after share prices plunged.“

I love these guys. Investing their money in stocks, in a country which barely has something to be called “an economy”. I wonder what do those people think? That stocks are something which can always be bought for cheap and sold more expensively? And that stock prices are driven by governments or the people who operate the stock market? Did those guys imagined that after trashing the KSE, investors from London would simply start placing BUY orders for huge prices? I think they enjoyed their afternoon tea watching this on satellite TV.

Somebody should create a Stock Plunge Protection Team, to help suffering investors. This almost resembles the US gas price caused, “pain at the pump”. People’s birthright of making tons of money without working (or thinking), must be protected at all costs.

These “investors” looks like they have hedged their portfolios well:

I would love to post more on this one, but I almost spilled Coke on my laptop a few times, laughing, while writing this post.

Best quote from a Pakistani investor:
“I am upset because I am constantly losing money and there is no one ready to help me.“

Please give this guy a hand