Because Amazon jumped from $482 per share to $563 yesterday after a surprising earnings report, Jeff Bezos made 7 billion bones in less than 45 minutes. "As the shares climbed, they surpassed those of Walmart, making Amazon the highest-valued company in retail in the world," the Guardian reports. At the end of trading yesterday, the market value of Amazon was $272 billion, compared to Walmart's $233.2 billion.

All of this speculation will certainly have a physical impact on our city. The inflation of the company will result in the inflation of local property assets and the consequent attraction of global capital flows. One example: A seven-bedroom Tudor mansion, "complete with a batting cage and saltwater pool," which was sold by a retired baseball pitcher to Chinese investors for $3.2 million, is now being "rented out to a group of Amazon.com employees."

What John Maynard Keynes wrote in the best and most readable chapter of his Depression-era book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money is still relevant today and to Seattle:

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.