Earlier this afternoon on Wall Street, in the great hall of the New York Stock Exchange, the brokers had been on high alert, watching the screens like hawks. They smoked like chimneys, their faces twitching with stress as they monitored the fluctuating values of American companies listed on the Exchange: Coca-Cola, JP Morgan, Ford and many others. Their job was to buy shares to make profits in the long term, or small gains in the short term. You had to know when it was the right time to sell. The brokers of Wall Street all knew one another, and the richest magnates of American industry entrusted their funds to them – astronomical sums of money to be reinvested in the flourishing American economy. Since the end of the war, the United States of America had been classed as a superpower, and the engine that drove this power was the great hall of Wall Street.
Some brokers didn’t know which way to turn, what to buy or what to sell. Thousands of companies were listed on the exchange for the American public, but also for foreign investors. A superpower did not default on its lenders, for they were inflexible and demanded that their earnings continue to increase. They were, after all, the American people. How much had they made? Where was the goddamn money? Why wasn’t he investing in armaments? Such disputes between brokers and investors were frequent. “The Dow Jones is up over a hundred points!” one broker called to his team. Still, gas prices were down. “We gotta close the taps, goddamnit!” cried another. Rumours were circulating that a broker named Gino had made a million dollars. That was a million dollar bills, two hundred thousand five dollar bills, or a hundred thousand ten-dollar bills. And on every one of them it was written: In God we trust. But that was not enough, no sir. Not enough for a house in Miami, or an apartment with a view of Central Park, for a beachfront villa in Santa Monica. This consuming desire was the Wall Street drug, and they were all hooked on it.
Americans trusted in their booming, expansionist economy. The country’s faith lay in capitalism, a system in which all that mattered was work and profit. American imperialism would come in time. “Anything’s possible in this country!” Gino was saying to a broker who’d asked him for advice. The investors were never satisfied. Why weren’t their share prices rising? It was time to buy, since share prices were low. The brokers were exasperated at hearing this, since they knew their trade better than anyone. They could read the clues and the trends. Every day in the market hall it was the same fiasco, the same chaos. Some fought, while others joined forces to make bigger profits. Gino knew the dance all too well. He’d arrived at Wall Street with less than ten thousand dollars to his name; money he had saved when he worked for a small bank in Minnesota. The day he made his million he cut out all the newspaper articles that covered his exploit; a chronicle of his great success story. But Gino was not ready to stop there; he wanted to buy some of the most expensive stocks so he could make even more money. The day’s trading had not been kind to everyone. Gino’s success still resonated throughout the great hall, and everyone wanted to be like him.
At night the curtain descended upon the theatre once more, and the feverish din of Wall Street fell to a hush once more.
Alan Alfredo Geday
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