“Something ventured, next to nothing gained”
The Toronto Stock Exchange Composite Index peaked 10 years ago in 2000 at 11,300 points. Today, after its biggest one year gain in the history of the market, the index sits at 11,746 points. If my math is correct (and right now I wouldn’t bank on anything so speculative) that would mean that for every $1000 I had invested against that index in 2000, I would be sitting here today with a whopping return of about $39 (of course that would assume that there was zero inflation between then and now and zero bank and brokerage fees). In retrospect, I should probably have stuffed all my cash into a mattress, purchased a lot more beer and then returned the empties for a bigger windfall. I am not complaining though. Ten years ago, Bill Gates was the richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of $60 billion. Today he is still the richest man in the world but his estimated net worth is only $40 billion – must suck to be Bill (I’m way better off than that loser. Praise the Lord and pass the champagne).
Runner Up: During World War II, Japan was experimenting on Prisoners of War to develop the perfect germ warfare delivery system — insects. With a budget rivaling that of the American Manhattan Project, Japan’s covert Unit 731 killed more people in China (580,000) than were killed in Japan by the two Atomic Bombs over Hiroshima (140,000) and Nagasaki (80,000), combined. Shiro Ishii, the ruthless head of the unit, retired on a full military pension as neither he nor any of his men saw the inside of a war crimes courtroom. Moreover, all but one of the heads of the Japanese National Institute of Health between 1947 and 1983 had served in Unit 731.