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| A Burgeoning Fortune 500 Company, and You Can Get in on the Ground Floor! |
WSJ - Pirates are on a hot streak this season. World-wide, the first quarter of 2011 saw 142 recorded attacks, up from 67 in that time last year. Off the coast of Somalia there were 97, as against 35 last year. Why? Despite some efforts by Western powers to patrol the Horn of Africa, pirates are still able to access capital, as any successful business must. The world's first pirate stock exchange was established in 2009 in Harardheere, some 250 miles northeast of Mogadishu, Somalia. Open 24 hours a day, the exchange allows investors to profit from ransoms collected on the high seas, which can approach $10 million for successful attacks against Western commercial vessels. While there are no credible statistics available, reports from various news sources suggest that over 70 entities are listed on the Harardheere exchange. When a pirate operation is successful, it pays investors a share of the profits. According to a former pirate who spoke to Reuters, "The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials. . . . We've made piracy a community activity."
No joke, someone from the Obama administration may want to get a couple of these Pirate traders on the phone and see if they can't help unravel this mess we got on Wall Street these days. Because while the US and the rest of the world have been in financial free fall for the past few years, apparently capitalism has been alive and flourishing in Mogadishu and the seas off of Somalia.
In fact, not only has it been flourishing, but they've taken it upon themselves to create a truly free market enterprise built on community values and performance based results. There are no "golden parachutes" send offs, no exorbitant CEO bonuses for under-performing companies, and no bailouts required from innocent tax payers, in fact there probably aren't tax payers.
What you've got is a true pay for performance organization. A pirate pitch's his plans and skills, rounds up investors and weapons and goes about his business, if business is good everyone profits, if business is bad, not only doesn't said pirate get a bonus, he probably gets killed. There is simply no room for under performing pirates in today's market.
And the best part is people from Somalian Main street and Wall Street alike are cashing in. You don't need some fancy financial degrees to be a part of the game. You don't know about Pirating? That's fine volunteer some time, organize a RPG collection fundraiser, there's room for everyone in the Pirate game, no one gets shut out and everyone profits.
