The marketplace is as inimicable a force in human affairs as gravity in planetary physics. States can distort market forces with tariffs, subsidies, price controls and taxation, but the markets persist. A perfect example would be Prohibition. Sexual favors are easily obtained everywhere in America despite their legality only in rural Nevada. Think black market cigarettes, bookies, nights in the Lincoln Bedroom. Where sufficient demand exists someone will step forward to fill the need.
An exchange has now opened in Haradheere (Hardy Har Har?), Somalia where any investor may participate in the lucrative piratical trade off the eastern coast of Africa. While some risk is involved and tax consequences are not determined; compared to Social Security it appears close to a sure thing!
By Darla Mercado
December 1, 2009, 12:03 PM EST
(REUTERS)
People gather outside a former local bank, where pirates were dividing ransom payment obtained for the freeing of the Spanish ship Alakrana, as they wait to collect their money in Haradheere, northeast of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, November 18, 2009.
According to published reports, Somali pirates have created a stock exchange to manage their ill-gotten gains.
These scourges of the Gulf of Aden have been attracting dozens of investors over the course of the last four months, according to a Reuters returns. The burgeoning exchange, located in the coastal town of Haradheere, Somalia, started with 15 “companies” and is now up to 72 entities, the news service found.
A wealthy former Somali pirate named Mohammed told Reuters that shares in the exchange are open to all who would like to participate. Investors receive shares in a pirate company by taking part in a raid on a ship. Backers who don’t want to go that far can also get shares by providing cash or weapons to the pirates. Investors are paid dividends – a cut of the ransom money.
Business has been booming. On Sunday, nine Somali pirates seized a Greek-flagged oil tanker some 700 miles off the coast of Somalia, near the Seychelles Islands, according to published reports. The vessel, the Maran Centaurus, was carrying 275,000 metric tons of crude oil, according to a report from the Associated Press.
There’s easy money in capturing tankers, which don’t have armed security because of their flammable cargo. The pirates netted a $3 million ransom payment last year when they hijacked the Saudi Arabian tanker Sirius Star, according to the AP.