Here’s a clip from BBC News interviewing a trader that’s kind of shocking. There are questions as to whether or not he is a part of a social satire group called the “Yes Men”. The Yes Men have denied this, and the BBC has investigated it and are satisfied that he is a legit trader. Gems from the interview include “I’ve been dreaming of another recession” and “Governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs and the other big funds do.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lei0wVtlczQ]
[update] Australia’s ABC News network (not to be confused with the US network) has this great article.ย Several quotes from it include:
…dig a little deeper into Rastani’s affairs, discovering that he lives in a cheap house in Bexleyheath and appears to have little in the way of personal assets or financial markets expertise.
Ordinary people seem to have found his performance so compelling precisely because Rastani dared to speak the unspoken truth of contemporary economics. By so comprehensively reinforcing the popular stereotypes of bankers and financial market speculators, Rastani has again brought the mind-boggling risk-taking and untrammeled power of global financial markets to everyday attention.
When a 31-year old in London named Kweku Adoboli can rack up $2.3 billion dollars of losses in unauthorised trades at merchant bank UBS, the outlandish statements of a dubious BBC day trader don’t seem all that far-fetched.
And while slightly longer, this quote is my favorite:
…there’s no doubt that top executives of large merchant banks โ especially Goldman Sachs โ continue to exercise significant influence in many western governments. Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson were both former bosses at Goldman Sachs. Former Goldman Sachs executives have headed the New York Stock Exchange, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department, and the White House staff. It was also Goldman Sachs that helped the Greek government cook its own books between 1998 and 2009, hastening its headlong rush towards insolvency. No less an authority than former International Monetary Fund economist Simon Johnson has argued that the US government has been captured by a financial oligarchy.
And, with a quote within a quote because I’m too lazy to dig up the original:
Discussing Rastani’s interview on Wednesday’s episode of The Drum, Tanver Ahmed said that “it’s the equivalent of saying ‘Oh my god, a professional soccer player only cares about scoring goals’.
God, this is why I love the international press. how much more informative (and intelligent) is this piece?
The other thing Ahmed seems to be implying is that day trading and speculative investment is no more a matter of public concern than the activities of a professional sports person. But no footballer has racked up billions of dollars of losses because of rogue goalkicking. Even FIFA can’t bring down a major bank.Traders and speculators in financial markets are different. Even individually, they can threaten the solvency of major financial institutions. Collectively, they continue to adversely affect the rest of our economy. As John Maynard Keynes wrote in the 1930s, “when the capital development of a country becomes the by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”.
Finally, the last quote, with gratitude to it’s author, Ben Eltham
And that’s the point: the problem of amoral day traders and rootless hot money sloshing around the globe is not about the moral failures of individuals. It’s structural. Until governments take the necessary steps to bring unbridled financial speculation under control with tighter regulation and more stringent controls on international flows of capital, there will be many more Alessio Rastanis โ and more Jerome Kerviels and Kweku Adobolis as well.