One Stinger vs. Thousands
Touring the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix this winter, I remember the guide fielding a question about whether anyone had ever been injured by cactus needles.
He answered that he’d seen a severe injury just once: someone who encountered a bumble bee was so undone that they backpedaled right into a nearby cactus and its thousands of needles.
In a nutshell, that’s my take on how society has collectively dealt with Wall Street and a clearly dysfunctional financial system: for fear of messing with a bumble bee (and its rather mild stinger) . . . we’ve backed into a cactus (i.e., a potential global sovereign debt crisis).
P.S.: the analogy’s not perfect: no one’s ever called Wall Street docile.
