progress has achieved wonderful things, too. Paving. Asphalt. Smog. Car alarms that wake you up in the middle of the fucking night. Carcinogenic food. The Exxon Valdez. That stereo in the apartment upstairs. Hydrogen bombs. Hormone-injected meat. Artificial coloring. Alarm clocks (and a society so dependent on measured time that we need alarm clocks). Television, and a society that has replaced "How can we improve the human condition?" with "Hey, did'ja see the Simpsons last night? Huh huh". An Internet where people like us can waste away their free time instead of going out and having a life. Yeah! Progress! I love it! Get me the genetic splicing kit! I want to make a new kind of trout!
And Alatar ignored Pallando's warnings yet again, and opened the first McDonald's; and so another cult began. And Pallando wept; and stood alone upon the parking lot, and called to the West, and said, 'O great Powers! Can even the sorrows of Nienna grant us pity for this evil deed?'; and he threw himself upon the pavement. Yet from the West there came no reply
Harry's capitalization pool was starting to roll over. He knew there was fallout risk. With a quick glance at Ron and Hermione he added a short hedge of soft dollars and stirred in some FASB No. 8. But this was a mistake; the market began churning, and his small-issues exemption began to smoke. He started trying to write down the value when he felt, rather than heard, Snape gliding up from behind. His variance was harsher, less ironic, than usual. "So, Potter," he sneered. "That's your solution? When someone takes a poison pill, you can't always just shove a BARRA analysis down their throat, you know. If this had been a volatile market you'd be in Askaban for having violated Glass-Steagall." Snape looked down his nose at him, his equity balanced. "You're just like your father: arrogant, always at unsystematic risk, overextended, overbought and underfinanced."
This was too much. "My father was not overextended!" Harry shouted, jumping from his stool, portfolio in hand
"It's not like that in the magical world, 'Arry," Hagrid said, voice lowered in concern. "Y'see, when Vol... well, when You-Know-Who set up a trust deposit insurance scheme, 'e didn't account for rising interest rates. And 'e didn't give codflakes about whether it would influence currency issues abroad, or take into account nominal seasonal fluctuations in the GNP as accounted for in Dumbledore's rules. See, that's what makes him so evil, Harry; by doin' this he unpinned meaningful values from real estate an' just left 'em floatin', an' so the loss in equity was inevitable