can see how those in the investment business, brokers,
bankers on one side, and suckers on the other are
setting some patterns of behaviour because of the
lack of regulator oversight.
The bankers, the human ones, not the machines,
like shitty-assed bully boys in your
school (we all knew some) are running amok,
stealing everything that isn't nailed down, and
houses, too. and countries.
The machines on the other hand, while also not
under control of any humans, are doing the grunt
work of making markets, fake ones, but markets
nonetheless.
The problem here is that the HFT algos are reading
Twitter automatically and cannot discern truth from
bullshit. That means that a hack of AP last week
led to a small flash crash.
the Twitterers leading the machines
jokers leading the blind
Now, I've been hoping for just such a black swan,so I'm happy, but when you wish for chaos, you
really have nothing left to lose. The markets
are really out of control.
Eric Scott Hunsader is also worried:
twitter-
Eric
Scott Hunsader @nanexllc 9m
To
think the capitalization value of Western
World over next minute hinges on how
algos interpret news.
Here are two stories about the behaviour of the
shitty-assed bullies I told you about. the humans
check it:
1 The Reformed broker
“absolutely
out of control”
Joshua M Brown
April 28th, 2013
“I meet a lot of these people on Wall
Street on a regular basis right now...I am going to put it very bluntly: I regard
the moral environment as pathological.
And I am talking about the human interactions . . . I’ve not seen anything like
this, not felt it so palpably...They
have no responsibility to pay taxes; they have no responsibility to their
clients; they have no responsibility to people, to counterparties in
transactions...They are tough, greedy, aggressive and feel absolutely out
of control in a quite literal sense, and
they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent.”
The
above comes from a no-holds-barred talk Jeffrey
Sachs gave that literally stunned
the crowd at a recent conference focused on fixing the financial system.
There
are many industry insiders and watchers who agree with Mr. Sachs that things
are more disgusting than ever, thanks in part to the de facto guarantee that none of the surviving institutions post-crisis
are going to be touchable for new offenses. The government has admitted as
much with their brand new Too Big To Prosecute mentality. Yes, this exists, in recent congressional testimony from
Eric Holder, US Attorney General, the following incredible comment was given a
public airing (but then The Voice came on that night and we all forgot about
it):
“I am concerned that the size of some of
these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to
prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute — if we do bring a criminal charge — it
will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world
economy,” Mr. Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I think that is
a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”
I
see this attitude creeping back along
with the fund flows and the major stock market averages. Everyone on The Street
can feel it. The thing is, most people are someone's payroll or are
benefitting from the new Niagara Falls of legal and investment fees to some
extent. They have no incentive to open
up the way Jeffrey Sachs does here. The politicians on both sides are
similarly silent, having taken in
more than a quarter of a billion from
The Street during the last election year.
Business
as usual and the music's playing once again - we're all dancing.
2
Ny
post
Influential
economist says Wall Street's full of 'crooks'
By JOHN AIDAN BYRNE
Last Updated: 3:55 PM, April 28, 2013
Posted: 11:26 PM, April 27, 2013
Corruption,
insider trading and criminal behavior are rampant on a vast scale on Wall
Street today as financiers and Washington play the same greedy games that
brought us to the brink five years ago, according to one of the world’s most
influential economists.
Wall
Street is full of “crooks,” and it never properly cleaned up its act after the
financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs
told a distinguished gathering of bankers and professionals in bombshell
remarks at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve building earlier this month.
What’s
behind this, says the high-profile academic twice named one of Time magazine’s
100 Most Influential People in the World, is “a docile president, a docile
White House and a docile regulatory system that absolutely can’t find its
voice.”
Sachs
pulled no punches. “What has been revealed, in my view, is prima facie criminal behavior,” he said.
“It’s
financial fraud on a very large extent,” the adviser to the World Bank and IMF
added. “There’s also a tremendous amount of insider trading — you can even
watch when you are living in New York how that works.”
In
his live remarks, via video teleconference from New York, an emotionally
charged Sachs also ripped into practices at Goldman Sachs and into the
political classes on both the left and right. (The Post listened to the audio.)
“We
have a corrupt politics to the core, I am afraid to say, and . . . both parties
are up to their neck in this. This has nothing to do with Democrats or
Republicans,” Sachs told the Philadelphia conference, “Fixing the Banking
System for Good.”
Sachs
described an environment of Wall Street
buying off politicians with their huge campaign contributions. In the 2012
election cycle, political contributions by the securities and investment sector
totaled some $271.5 million, compared with $176 million in 2008, according to
the Center for Responsive Politics.
