Small investors sleep like babies

Daj/getty Images

It says in a joke that a man told his friend he was sleeping like a baby ever since he had lost money in the stock market. The puzzled friend asked what that was supposed to mean, and the man replied that he woke up every hour and cried. More than three million investors in this country have lost their money in the stock market, and I don't know how many of them can sleep at night. But I have got a friend who has lost more than half his savings. He wakes up every hour and cries like a baby.
Are these investors sleeping any better since the finance minister held the press conference last Saturday? He said many things that did not exactly pour honey into the ears of those who eagerly waited to hear more from him. The probe committee report will be released uncut. The Securities and Exchange Commission will be recast. Then the minister also said that further investigations would be held to punish the culprits of the share scam.
I can't speak for other investors, but my friend isn't convinced. The first question he asked was why did the finance minister change his mind? And what is the big deal about releasing the report now that most of it is public knowledge? Then he says that the first thing the honourable minister should have announced was a committee to investigate the names.
Yes those names. It appears that we are losing sight of that wood for the trees. Why did the minister initially announce that he was going to release the report only after redacting those names? Why did he say that the small investors were a greedy bunch of silly people who deserved what they got? In the process the investors have lost confidence in him. He appeared to be more concerned over the reputation of a handful of manipulators than the well being of more than 3.3 million wretched people.
We are glad the minister has spoken to us last week. We are also glad he has changed his mind. But there is a time for flowers, and there is a time for fruits. The minister has definitely missed that point. It's late in the day to give us the names, which are already on our lips. He should have taken us to the next level. He should have given us more.
For example, what does he plan to do with those names? How does he plan to proceed with further investigation? What is he going to do so that the next investigation won't meet the fate of the previous one? How do we know this won't be just another ruse to bide time so that it recedes in public memory and the culprits get more time to erase their fingerprints?
In essence, Saturday's press briefing was mere rumination. It reminded us of the scam, and for the victims it was yet another occasion to add insult to their injury. It was a rude awakening for them that their minister wasn't worried about them.
Because, hoping against hope, the luckless investors had kept their fingers crossed. They expected the finance minister to separate whey from milk. They expected a kind of closure to their grievances in the same way a victim's family comes to watch a killer in the electric chair.
Instead, the whole thing turned out to be eclectic. It showed political calculations, not moral mathematics. It showed that while a government needed ordinary people to get elected, it needed extraordinary people to stay in power. It ricocheted an unsavoury truth that the democratic aspirations of people in this country are being exploited by the plutocratic ambitions of a few crooks.
To put the matter in perspective, the share scam has been the biggest heist in the history of this country. It was a serial crime that robbed 3.3 million homes in this country. How can the minister choose to look the other way and do nothing to catch the culprits?
My friend had high hopes that something was going to be done. He thought the minister was going to bring some comfort to those homes, where insomniac investors mourn for their money in characteristic rituals. They turn in their beds. Their blood pressure shoots up. They talk to themselves, tormented by the despair that they have nobody but themselves to blame.
I know my friend goes through all those steps. Lately, he is obsessed with his allegory of the amusement park. Who is responsible if children get hurt due to technical fault in a ride? The finance minister is responsible for the share market. Why isn't anybody talking about it?
I asked what John Kennedy once did: "Who said life was fair?" My friend replied that he was convinced last week.

The writer is Editor, First News and a columnist of The Daily Star.
Email: [email protected]