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Day 13
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[znn com/business/zsec-suspends-trading-of-tald-on-the-zse]
:ZSEC Suspends Trading of TALD on the ZSE
By Rodney Silfur
The Zootopia Security and Exchanges Commission (ZSEC) has officially suspended trading of Talon Defense stock (TALD) on the Zootopia Stock Exchange (ZSE). The move came this morning shortly before market open.
This follows yesterday's extreme volatility in the stock after Talon Defense CEO, Jayson Talon, announced the launch of a new product, TAME BandTM. Claiming to be the solution to the Savage Crisis, TALD shares spiked throughout yesterday, closing at 317% over open, and triggered an unprecedented 7 trading halts along the way.
Rarely witnessed, trading halts automatically freeze trading for 15 minutes when the price of a stock changes too rapidly. Designed as a way to prevent excessive losses, few realized the mechanism could be triggered for excessive gains. This led to confusion and outrage as traders attempting to take part in the rapid upside found their transactions rejected during the halts.
Any decision to suspend a stock requires ZSEC to investigate the company in question. A lawsuit filed against Jayson Talon for his controversial statements and actions during the crisis is suspected to complicate the inquiry.
In her brief statement earlier this morning, ZSEC Chair-mammal, Elene Hornskey, said, "There is no indication of direct manipulation, but foul play or not, we have a duty to protect the market from herding exuberance."
With the core of the market down and continuing to drop steadily, it is believed that the price spike in TALD was the result of traders searching for a safe haven during the current crisis.
Even while taking record losses, financial disclosures from last year's filings suggest that Talon Defense has enough reserve capital to sustain its current trajectory for years.
Standing at just $74.1 billion three weeks ago, current Talon Defense market capitalization is now frozen at $989.7 billion. With no indication of when or if the suspension will be lifted, owners of TALD are left to wonder if they are holding fortunes or nothing at all.
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[pouncehart com/opinion/dont-buy-your-own-chains]
:Don't Buy Your Own Chains
By Anton Pouncehart
The whole city watched yesterday as Talon Defense CEO, Jayson Talon, practically cried on national T.V. as he reminisced over the plights of predators in Zootopia.
Are we really supposed to believe that this smarmy buck gives a damn about predators? Under his leadership, Talon products have been absolutely flooding the streets of Zootopia. When is he going to start fawning over the predators being assaulted by mammals using his defense products?
As we reported yesterday, and confirmed this morning, 5 attacks on predators have been carried out using Talon Defense products in the last 2 days. There is nothing defensive about using a Fox Taser to incapacitate a predator innocently walking down the street, then using an entire can of Fox Away on them, and finally beating them to within inches of death. While there are very clear commonalities in the methods and motives of the attacks, the ZPD is still refusing to acknowledge this as a pattern and every other news outlet has yet to report on a single one of these incidents.
Instead of acknowledging that his products are being used for offense as much as they are for defense, Jayson Talon has graced the world with a new one: TAME BandTM.
It's been a little over 24 hours since this revolutionary solution has been on the market and while there have been a lot of questions asked about how it works, you can always trust ZNN to leave out the important ones.
How did Talon Defense come up with a solution so quickly?
Are we supposed to believe that an old-school defense company was able to concept, design, test, manufacture and bring to market something this high-tech in less than 2 weeks? Really?
It's hard to know if the answer to that question is worse than the fact that ZNN has not asked it at all. ZNN has always had negligent reporting in the past, but its performance during this crisis has been downright collusive.
If you were paying attention to the questions answered about TAME BandTM so far, you should be wary of the product. If you were paying attention to the questions not asked, you should be terrified.
I can't remember the last time Chantenay Inc. released a new cPhone or pawPad that didn't have bugs in it, and I have yet to see any other company release a device that was un-hackable. Yet we are supposed to trust a company that has no experience in the tech industry to strap an internet-connected shock collar to our necks? Really?
I am not going to say that you should not be scared of recidivism. We still don't know what is causing it, but if you are planning to buy a TAME BandTM because of that fear, you are playing right into their trap.
Wearing one will set you apart and single you out as a formerly dangerous predator, while not wearing one will mark you as a currently dangerous one. Either way, this device has already indelibly marked all predators with a stigma of fear and reason for resentment.
Some of you may be worried that they will make these mandatory one day; they won't, we will do it to ourselves. It won't be long before other mammals greet you by looking at your neck, instead of your eyes, and judging you for what they find there.
This is just another method of control and just because it comes in 20 different colors, and it has an associated app, doesn't make it any less of a form of bondage.
Don't buy your own chains predators.
To the many prey members in this audience, I say to you: reject the TAME BandTM. Predators are the focus for now, but don't think that they won't come for you next. This isn't about predator versus prey or us versus them, this is about those in power versus everyone else, and we are all in danger.
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...
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Nick was rather dismayed to hear the chirping pings coming from his phone alarm. He would have been more dismayed had it not gone off, though, as he knew the alert gave him a fifteen minute head-start before the next Rainforest District shower was scheduled.
He reached into his pocket to silence it, and reluctantly ran his paws up to his face, under his tortoise shell sunglasses, and wiped the sleep from his eyes. He blinked several times and stretched out his arms and legs, as he got his bearings.
His movement caused his lounge chair to creak and groan as the tree limb it was attached to yawed and swayed faintly beneath the shifting weight. Below that was approximately fifteen hundred feet of freefall. He had no concern about the branch breaking; it wasn't really made out of wood, and even if it had been, his weight was hardly enough to do it in. There was no fear that the chair would fall, either, as he was more than confident in his knotting ability. I was almost a ranger scout once.
He sat up and looked around at the dense green canopy just below him. Out a ways beyond it, he could see the large synthetic branches of The Palms over Sahara Square. Slightly to his left he could see the skyscrapers of downtown Savannah Central backed by the mountains, and to his right, an afternoon snowstorm over Tundra Town.
The view was definitely what most mammals would consider pretty, perhaps even romantic, but for Nick, it's beauty was derived from its seclusion. From this vantage point, he could see quite a bit of the city, but he couldn't see any of its citizens, and none of them could see him. It was as if he was completely alone and the entire city belonged to him.
It would be so much easier if that's how things really were. The feeling of loneliness itself was so much easier to manage than keeping his mask up. Over the last two weeks he had regained his ability to keep that mask rather flawless, but it still wasn't quite as automatic as it used to be, and it left him exhausted at the end of each day. Just being alone was nearly as restful as the nap he'd just taken and he resented the pending sprinkler spray for disturbing his peace.
He took one last deep breath, held it, and then exhaled it as a huff. He swung his legs over the arm of the chair and climbed onto the branch. The tree limb was rather flat and was not in fact an actual branch at all. It was a synthetic piece of the building that was his apartment complex that was only made to look like a tree. Many, but not all, of the other trees around him were real, and the environmental architects had done a fine job of making it difficult to tell which were which.
He was careful to mind his balance, but unlike his masking ability, that had retained its automation. He hadn't officially grown up in this district, but he had spent quite a bit of his youth here. Contrary to popular belief, most places in the district did not require any special balancing skills to get to, but the interesting places definitely did, and he had perfected the talent long ago.
This was one such interesting place and he had been glad to find it. He couldn't be sure, but it seemed to be a maintenance boom of some kind, perhaps even a crane arm that had been covered up, and the access door he used to get up here had not actually been locked, but rather rusted shut, leading him to believe that this place had been forgotten long ago. While no one had ever disturbed him since he'd been coming here, he still hadn't classified it as safe, at least not like the warehouse was, and even though the sun in this district was always blunted by overcast, though less so at this height, nothing could beat how close it was to his apartment; just a thousand feet of stairs and ladders. It was an effort, but well worth it.
He unsecured the rope holding his chair to the beam and effortlessly converted the length into backpack straps. He donned the cargo and made his way towards the main shaft of the tree.
He climbed down the old rickety rope ladders and pitted concrete stairs, back down into the depths of the city. His mind had been relatively clear, but it began its descent back into thought as well. When he wasn't thinking about nothing, or selling pawpsicles, he was typically consumed with thoughts of the savage crisis; why it was happening, if it would ever stop, if there had been something he could have done about it, and every now and then, whether or not he might be next. After yesterday's announcement, though, his thoughts had been consumed almost entirely by the collars, and whether or not that might be what befell him next.
He still couldn't think of them as bands. The word sounded wrong and it wasn't descriptive, it was deceptive. One of the news articles he'd read this morning had called them 'shock collars', which was both conceptually disconcerting to think about, and relieving that he wasn't alone in his thoughts about it.
Though, that report had been a Pouncehart article, and having consensus with the mad canid, as they called him, wasn't exactly proof to society that one wasn't crazy. As with most things in life, Nick wasn't overly concerned with what others thought about the grey-furred journalist, and he suspected that, like him, most of the mammals who followed the snappy commentator didn't make a show of what news sources they were using. Of all the things Nick had read, Pouncehart was about the only one that made any sense.
Just as Nick got to the bottom of the last set of ladders, the sunlight began to dim rapidly, and white noise rose to fill the air. He knew he only had a few more seconds before the water reached him, but he was close enough to the rusted door on the roof proper that he was confident he'd remain dry. Nearly an instant after he'd closed the door behind him, rain started its pitter-patter against the steel roof of the access hatch.
While he made his way down the steps, he considered the possibility that the mainstream sentiment about Pouncehart was correct and that perhaps crazy foxes always found each other sane. Even if he was crazed, he decided that he wasn't any more so than the rest of the city, not with their TAME Collars and savages, and he saw no reason he should change his news strategy now. In fact, the only thing he could personally identify about Pouncehart that was crazy, was just how right on the mark he usually was. Nick's instinctual craving for as much information as possible had a caveat desire for accurate information as well, and his fellow fox wasn't wrong about the sizable omissions in ZNN's coverage. Though, Nick had decided, he would maybe leave the speculation and theorization as to why those gaps existed to the professionals.
Nick strolled down the hallway toward his apartment. He was about to dig his keys out of his pocket when a red slip of paper, scotch-taped to his door, caught his green eyes.
Damn…
He abandoned the retrieving of his keys and reached up to grab the note instead. He unfolded and stared at it.
Notice to All Predatory Tenants
Rent will be increased by $500 per month, effective immediately.
The increase is to pay for predation insurance. Please pay the amount in full or be moved out by the end of the week.
Thank You :)
At the bottom of the note, penciled in very tiny letters that he had to squint to make out, Nick found a post script:
If you stay, yours is due by tomorrow and in full at the beginning of each month after.
Nick growled at the door as his paw clenched into a fist, crushing the paper and piercing it with his claws.
"By tomorrow, Mr. Wilde!" came a tiny shout from the end of the hall.
Nick turned to look for the source, anger still shaking his clenched fist. It was his landlord, Mr. Pruitt. The mouse must have been waiting for him to return to make sure that he saw it. The rodent wasn't alone, his escort a fiercely tusked warthog, but Nick didn't care as he approached with a snarl.
"No extensions, Mr. Wilde," the mouse said diminutively.
Nick had never asked for an extension on anything in his life. He didn't need this rodent's charity and he'd never asked for it.
Looking down at the mouse, he opened his paw, the paper sticking to his claws. He smoothed the note, and held it out.
"Predation insurance?" Nick asked with skeptical annoyance.
"In case you go savage," Mr. Pruitt said resolutely.
Nick brushed away his anger and stood up tall and straight and crossed his arms. "What company is holding the policy?" Nick asked smugly, with his sly half-lidded grin. He knew a hustle when he saw one.
The mouse's face went cross and Nick thought he'd caught him in the lie until the escort spoke in a deep and menacing tone, "You pay or you move out, fox."
Nick's eyes went to the hog and he kept them there, staring as uncaring as ever, as he stuffed the paper into his pocket and retrieved his wallet. He didn't break eye contact as he pawed through the bill fold, counting by touch. He removed only five notes and placed the wallet back where he found it.
It would be a cold day in Sahara Square before he caved to intimidation like this. It was clear their intention was to get him to leave; they didn't actually want him to pay the money, and the best way to stick it to them, was to pay anyway, on time and without complaint, regardless of his real feelings on the matter.
Finally breaking eye contact with the pig, he bent down and handed the five one-hundred dollar notes to his landlord.
"I don't need an extension, but thanks for the offer," he said contemptuously, through his fanged smile.
The mouse accepted the relatively oversized bills awkwardly and seemed to be disappointed to do so. Nick stood up and turned around to go back to his door.
"Have a good day now!" he said as he opened it and stepped inside.
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Nick stood just inside the door to his apartment and closed his eyes. It wasn't this one thing, he couldn't really give a damn how much his rent was at this point; it was everything else. Every little thing in the city, every little moment of the day, all conspiring against him, always. All because of what he was. He still couldn't help but think that, in some way, he deserved all this, that it was right to punish him for being a fox, but that didn't change how completely exhausting it was.
He put his paws to his eyes and rubbed them as he took a deep breath.
Can I just have one day? Please…
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Thanks for reading! I know this was a short one, but there is another longer chapter on the horizon very soon. It is practically done already but I wanted to space it out so that there was not a large gap over the holidays.
Market talk:
'herding exuberance' - this is meant to be a play on 'irrational exuberance' which is a term coined by former Federal Reserve Board chairman, Alan Greenspan when he was describing how overvalued the stock market was during the dot-com bubble in the 1990s. (What he failed to mention was that his monetary policy is the reason there was a bubble in the first place, but I digress).
While it is (theoretically) irrational for humans to participate in 'group think' about the value of a stock and follow what others are doing instead of coming up with our own independent conclusions, it would be perfectly rational for some groups of animals (anthros) to do it. Herding instinct would play even more havoc with their markets then it does in ours, and they would likely have similar safeguards in place to protect against it.
Trading halts and suspensions are about what they sound like and how they are described in the article. If you want to know more, they are fairly common terms to search and I won't bore you with the details here.
Market Capitalization - This is the total value of all the stock on the market for a particular company. Believe it or not, there are several companies that have market caps that high right now. Typically these types of companies would never see a spike like this, but Zootopia is in a very atypical time right now and the herding mentality of traders is amplifying everything.
If you don't understand any of this, that's fine, just understand that there is a LOT of money changing paws right now (but it's not nearly as fun to just write it like that!).
Chantenay Inc. - Chantenay is a very common type of carrot. I was going to use 'Carrot' as a stand in for 'Apple', but Judy's nickname makes it confusing for this fandom. I thank eng050599 for pointing that out and suggesting I change it.
Nick and his rent… Poor fox… If you remember from the second chapter, 'Day 1', it was stated that Nick pays $100 per week (instead of the $400 per month that other tenants pay) making his rent roughly $433 a month (on average) making this new $500 charge a 115% increase in his rent.
It was hinted at here, but the next chapter will have a few more details on Nick's specific financial situation.
Life sucks for predators and it's only going to get worse; thanks Judy!
Thanks again for your readership! I promise the next one will be out very soon!
Special thanks to eng050599 and Highwing for editing this again! I continue to appreciate your insights and recommendations throughout this project!