Condor Options

The Dow rallied another 1.8% today; today, The New York Times reported that poor people in Haiti have resorted to eating mud. On good earnings news, Google jumped up 20% today. Today, mothers in Cité Soleil are giving away their children to anyone who will feed them:

In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.
…
Meanwhile, most of the poorest of the poor suffer silently, too weak for activism or too busy raising the next generation of hungry. In the sprawling slum of Haiti’s Cité Soleil, Placide Simone, 29, offered one of her five offspring to a stranger. “Take one,” she said, cradling a listless baby and motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. “You pick. Just feed them.” [link]

Most Americans have more food than we know what to do with – both in our cupboards and on our midsections. As the philosopher Peter Singer argued in a famous essay (“Famine, Affluence, and Morality”), the hoarding of wealth by the affluent in the face of rampant starvation and suffering in the world is morally indefensible.

We closed out a successful month at expiration today and were just drafting our monthly review, but it would be sort of despicable were we to continue on as if nothing were happening. Please consider devoting a few moments this weekend to the hungry and the vulnerable. We are increasing our individual and company donations for May, and invite you to take action, too, by donating to any of the following organizations. Thanks for your time.

The Lambi Fund of Haiti
Oxfam
CARE
Heifer International – thanks Linda!