Stocks Bring Out Gypsy in Them
Stockbrokers in most countries are men in smart suits and ties.
But the bulls and bears of Romania’s rudimentary stock market include women in long braids, with colorful gypsy skirts, often with babies at their breasts.
“I buy shares, I buy shares,” is their frequently heard cry on Bucharest street corners.
In the center of Romania’s capital, gypsy women are trading vouchers intended as the precursor to shares in state enterprises that will be sold off to private ownership.
Romania is creating a capitalist economy awkwardly as it emerges from more than four decades of communist rule. It plans to recreate a stock exchange that was abolished by the regime that was overthrown in a bloody revolution in December, 1989.
Accordingly, the government began distributing the vouchers last month to every adult in the population of 23 million.
Many citizens, like the gypsies, are buying them up in hopes of making a killing later.
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