Here’s unique solution to economic ills, courtesy of Iran’s new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: just hang a few people and Iran’s stock market problems might be over.
Tehran, Oct. 30 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the latest cabinet meeting in the Iranian capital that “if we were permitted to hang two or three persons, the problems with the stock exchange would be solved for ever�, according to a Tehran-based newspaper.
Ahmadinejad was addressing a cabinet meeting held to discuss the rapidly deteriorating situation at the Tehran Stock Exchange, the daily Ruznet reported on Sunday.
Ministers and experts disagreed with all the different views and proposals raised at the meeting, which came to an end without any concrete results. Tempers flew high and participants shouted at each other during the discussion, according to the daily.
Frustrated with the inability of his economic advisers and experts to come up with any solution, Ahmadinejad told them that the only way out of the current stock exchange and financial market problems was to “frighten� speculators by hanging two or three of them.
Well, this would certainly give a new meaning to the phrase “hanging out at the stock exchange.”
Why hasn’t Alan Greenspan come up with this brilliant policy yet? (Just give him time). MORE:
Iran’s ultra-Islamist President first sent jitters through the country’s markets when he said on the eve of the presidential elections in June that “stock exchange activities are a kind of gambling and we are against them�. Gambling is banned in Islam.
Nervous investors have been transferring their capital to other countries, and Dubai has benefited palpably from the flight of capital from Iran. The Tehran Stock Exchange has lost 20 percent of its value in the past four months.
“At the moment there are no buyers in this market, only sellers�, the newspaper Ruznet wrote. “Economists believe the situation is becoming more difficult to handle day by day�.
Incendiary statements by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian officials have contributed to the creation of an atmosphere of uncertainty and instability in the country’s financial markets, according to analysts.
Why all this uncertainty? Why should they be nervous if he compared it to gambling or suggested a few people swing (and not swing music, since he probably hates that, too..).
But, honestly, when you read news coming out of Iran these days doesn’t it send a shiver up your spine?
Isn’t it like reading about the Taliban regime in Afghanistan…that we’re getting inklings of an extremist threat. But this extremist threat backed up by a capable army, possibly a nuclear capability, and economic force? All the more reason to take stories from Iran VERY seriously, no matter how outlandish or extreme they may seem.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.