ually, it's just a barometer — and not a very accurate one — of financial speculation. The stock market is less of an investment than it is a gamble, and like a regular casino, to win big you have to bet big. To bet big you have to be able to withstand big losses. As in the casino, most bets don't win.

Based on the information I have from the only two people I've ever known who actually owned seats on the New York Stock Exchange, the market is no place for amateurs. Those who make their full-time living in the market have a better intelligence network than the CIA. Any news the public gets about the market is already ancient history to the insiders.

As for it being a barometer of the economy, the first thing to remember is that the phrase "the economy" is in itself misleading. It creates the impression of a homogenous unit. Truth is, the economy is just the daily sum of all economic transactions that take place. Many businesses in America do not have stock that is traded on the exchanges. In a country as large as ours, the "economy" might be blazing hot over here and stone cold over there. People who get raises tend to think the economy is good, and people who get laid off tend to think it is bad.

More importantly, we don't live in "the economy" any more than we live "in America." We live in a particular place. If we live in Alabama, then the economy in Nevada has no effect on us. If we live in Atmore, Ala., then the housing market in Birmingham, Ala., has no effect on us. If our local manufacturing plant closes, it's no consolation to know that Las Vegas is the fastest-growing city in America or that a new plant is opening in Utah.

I hate the corporate attempt to homogenize our country and convince us that we are all the same potato in the same pot. Localism and regionalism have been bad-mouthed by the intellectuals, usually those living in the most provincial of all cities, New York and Los Angeles. You can paper over reality, but you can't change it, and since we can't be in two places at the same time, we are, in fact, local and regional, wherever we might be.

Even national news is a myth. National news consists of nothing more than a collection of local stories some wire editor has decided might be of passing interest to people in other localities. That usually means crimes, accidents, natural disasters and occasional bizarre coincidences like three people being killed by Florida alligators in one week. You'll have to live a long time to see that story again.

The only real national news stories I can think of are presidential elections and wars. Everything else is local.

Nationalism and globalism are both corporate-created myths, and they both are being disproved by reality. Global trading is no different than it has always been. People in one country have always traded with people in other countries. The Earth, in fact, is not flat, and there are no people, outside of a few religious folks, on Earth who put the interests of others ahead of their own.

The multinational corporations, the chief peddlers of globalism, might still believe they can turn Earth into one plantation owned and managed by them, but their day is past. It's going to be downhill from now on for these unelected moguls.

We are, I believe, living in the twilight of Euro-American domination. We are like a former world champion gone to seed from luxurious living. At least that is my simplistic view of the world from the Gulf Coast on this very fine spring day. I hope that, rather than accepting it, you will use it as a starting point for some research and independent thinking of your own. If all you know is what you read in the newspapers, then I'm sorry to say you're in bad shape.