The most important story of the last year and no one noticed:
Yes. It is rigged. Also read this companion piece in the NY Times.
Obligatory youtubes:
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.
Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.
T R E 4 5 O N
A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
“More of this”, i said to the dog.
Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.
This blog will pay for itself.
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
Mart
A Wall Street trading firm is established on the novel marketing approach that you can trust us not to steal from you. Wow.
JPL
I’m shocked, just shocked that wall street could care less about us peons.
? Martin
Yeah, no. That the .01% are preying on the 1% is not the most important story. Anyone down here in the cheap seats that are in the market should be in a nice mutual fund or an S&P 500 Index or some such. That leaves us immune to this bullshit. The people getting fucked are the ones that believe they’re Jordan Belfort, not you and me.
The most important story of the year should be the GOPs continued assault on the poor and working poor – declining Medicare expansion, undermining ACA, undermining wage growth, undermining unemployment benefits, cutting food stamps – the whole lot. You think the guy pushing a broom gives a fuck that some stay-at-home stockbroker got bilked out of 2% of his day trading profits? Fuck no.
JGabriel
I’ll assert once again, any finance, banking, or communications corporation that marketed themselves with the slogan [Trade Stock/Bank/Phone] With Us: We’re Not Criminally-Inclined Sociopathic Assholes AND lived up to that slogan, would make record breaking profits within a year.
Mnemosyne
If anyone missed seeing Margin Call, it’s pretty much a fictionalized version of this story. Really well-done movie by the same guy who directed All Is Lost with Robert Redford this year.
the Conster
That CBS video is sponsored by [email protected] Says it all.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
Margin Call: I loved that movie. Good all around.
Who knew it was going to be more like a documentary?!
eric
@? Martin: Martin, respectfully, i would have to say that is number two. THE most important story is the ongoing effort to take away the right of poor black people to vote. Given our Nation’s “particular history” on this topic, this should be so far beyond the pale that people revolt. But, “some say” there has been voter fraud.” And, well, that is enough for the Very Serious People to sheath their pens, as if they were still sharp in the first instance. Thus, it is nothing to say, move along. One might argue that climate change denial is number one given the breadth of its impacts across all nations of the globe.
the Conster
Moderated for using the name of the bon3R pills that sponsor 60 minutes, because really, doesn’t that say it all?
ETA: also this post is just like Kristallnacht times infinity.
MikeBoyScout
I don’t know Cole.
Seems you are going after the Job Creators. Yeah, yeah, I know they aren’t creating jobs, but you’re scaring them.
kc
@? Martin:
Really?
I guess everyone who isn’t in a nice mutual fund can suck it.
kc
@kc:
Shit, never mind, I need to hear the whole thing before I shoot my big mouth off. I’d edit, but WP won’t permit me. FYWP!
SatanicPanic
@? Martin: Unless this could destabilize the whole economy (which doesn’t seem likely) I don’t know how big of a deal this is.
danielx
Not. News. Michael Lewis knew Wall Street didn’t have any problem with fucking their clients when he wrote Liars’ Poker, and that was a couple of decades ago. The only thing that has changed is the technology and the amounts involved. I admire Lewis as a writer, but it strikes me as disingenuous to think that Wall Street traders having a huge advantage over individual stock-pickers is a new phenomenon.
? Martin
@kc: I’m in individual stocks as well, but even excluding the high speed trading, the deck is and has always been massively stacked against us. Not only do you have insider information that none of us will be privy to, but you have guys like Jim Cramer that deliberately and openly manipulate the markets.
They’ve been around for ages and do vastly more damage than the high speed traders do. That doesn’t excuse HST, but any individual investor should realize that the game has been rigged against them for ever. It’s impossible for us to compete against an enterprise that has a dozen employees working 40 hour weeks to make sure we lose money. That’s obvious enough when you look at prices around options expiry, when you look at who and where financial data is leaked, and where rumors are generated.
We’re already getting fucked pretty bad here, and HST is just one extra move that may or may not affect us. HST is really going after the class of people that are usually preying on us.
Pogonip
63K, give or take, has been raised for Shanesha Taylor. She’ll need it, seeing as how she’s been charged with 2 felonies; even if she’s acquitted, the charges alone will prevent her from ever getting a decent job as long as she lives.
If you were she, what would you do? Try to get to Russia? That worked for Snowden. I suppose another tactic might be to disappear into someplace like Chicago (there are parts of Chicago where you can go for miles without seeing a white face) and live in the underground economy there. If I were she, though, I don’t think I’d stay around for my trial. To me this sounds like a prosecutor with political aspirations setting up a Tough On Crime position.
muricafukyea
Ah yes, wr0ng way Cole reminding us of his childishly simplistic views of how the worlds financial systems work again.
liberal
@danielx:
Lewis is a laughingstock, actually:
liberal
@? Martin:
Indeed, not the most “important” story, but the fact that HFT is nothing more than front-running is certainly an emblematic story.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Martin, can you STFU and piss off? No one needs you mansplainin’ away frontrunning the market, you fucking douchebag.
liberal
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
LOL.
I suppose next we’ll be treated to a discussion of why instituting chained CPI is simply not at all a cut in SS.
different-church-lady
I’d agree that high-speed trading techniques are detrimental and create market distortions that are unfair. But if they’re not illegal, then I can’t understand how you can call the situation “rigged”.
It’s like saying one hockey team has figured out a way to sharpen their skates in a way nobody else has ever done before. Until you make that way of doing it illegal why is it wrong?
The big boys are exploiting technology in ways the little guys can’t. That might be unfair, but it’s not “rigging” anything. They just figured out how to work the rules to their advantage, and IEX figured out how to counter-work that to their advantage — the better mousetraps, better mice cycle.
If we as a society feel that’s detrimental, then we need to make laws and regulations that fix it. But then we’d run into some genuine rigging — that of the influence of money over political action.
Liberty60
Well, there is another way to look at the 0.1% screwing the 1%, or the 5%.
Its tangent to the Baffler story about the tech moguls screwing their upper middle class employees.
Revolutions never happen when it is just the poor and working class getting screwed. People at the bottom just don’t, and can’t, create enough force and momentum to successfully overturn the status quo. Things get interesting when the anger reaches high enough to where those who can pull strings begin to do so.
I would like to think that we are reaching that point where software coders, accountants, engineers and other professionals begin to acquire a consciousness of class.
As in, class exists, and mine is getting screwed.
Origuy
The Borsa Italiana flips us off.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was commissioned to create a sculpture for the front of Milan’s Borsa Italiana, the Italian stock exchange. The result was not what they had in mind. (Link to Boing Boing. Click through for the full story at the Wall Street Journal.)
guachi
http://unskewobamacare.com/
This is hysterical.
VFX Lurker
@different-church-lady:
One option is to charge a tiny financial transactions tax for every trade, collected at the time of the trade. It would not affect the everyday traders, but it would kill any financial incentive to engage in high-frequency trading.
thalarctos (not the other one)
@Liberty60:
This.
In general, the poor and the working classes have a hard enough time keeping body and soul together; they often do not have the time, energy, education or wherewithal to take on the oligarchs. This is how the oligarchs like it.
The day is coming soon, and may even be upon us now, when the doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, etc., see the ground opening up under their feet and come to the realization that, thanks to the plutocrats, their own children face a future of downward mobility unless something is done.
hoodie
@? Martin: Yeah, I saw that story and thought it was just thieves stealing from other thieves. The guy that figures it out forms another exchange so he can make millions off of protecting Goldman Sachs’ ill-gotten gains. Makes you want to start pulling for the lions.
Villago Delenda Est
@MikeBoyScout:
Good. They need to be frightened for their lives, the vile, heartless scum.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Its a front page story when rich people are getting screwed.
Fluke bucket
@thalarctos (not the other one):
Amen and Amen!
Chris T.
@? Martin:
“Immune” is too strong a word. Everyone gets a bit of blood sucked out. It’s just, if you’re in a decent fund or index, it’s a couple of mosquito bites a year; if you’re trading fast and furious, it’s a couple of mosquito bites every nanosecond, draining you dry. :-)
The real danger is that once the trust is gone, the whole system can collapse, which kind of ruins everyone’s decade. See “crash of 2008” and the fact that we’re not recovered yet.
West of the Cascades
@Pogonip: I wouldn’t read anything into the fact that Ms. Taylor’s case hasn’t been dismissed yet. It’s early in the process — she was only arrested on March 20 and released today, with apparently a preliminary hearing this morning. Too early even without all the attendant press coverage for a decision to prosecute or dismiss. It could easily turn into a chance for the Maricopa County DA to get some good press for himself by having her plead to some misdemeanor with community service (maybe in a child care center??) plus time served … or even dismiss the charges.
And, frankly, I’d like to think that there are employers out there that would look favorably on her willingness to have risked so much just to get a freaking job — that’s some serious love and devotion along with desperation.
Here’s a great page describing the stigmatization of black women in the age of mass incarceration as well as Ms. Taylor’s Facebook page – quotes like “A mother’s treasure is her daughter,” “I may not be perfect but when I look at my children I know that I got something in my life perfectly right,” at http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2014/03/29/i-love-being-a-mommy-on-shanesha-taylor-black-motherhood-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration-2/ — her situation really drives home how far we’ve fallen as a nation in terms of having any sense of what is an appropriate moral response to someone who is in need and in poverty and who makes a mistake.
It also has a photo of her smiling … something that thousands of people have all tried to give a little bit to make happen again. Kudos again to Cole and TBOGG for front-paging her story.
John Cole
Sigh.
p.a.
And here I am auditioning retirement advisors.
Pogonip
@West of the Cascades: I sure hope you’re right and they bargain down to a misdemeanor.
Rock
I thought it was it interesting that the villainous “high-frequency traders” were never identified in the piece. Why, the leading banks were shocked to learn of this themselves! Goldman has even endorsed the new honest exchange, so they must have been getting ripped off too!
I wonder if we will ever figure out who the HTFers are.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Cascades:
Also, I think there’s a HUGE moral difference between risking leaving your kids in the car for a job interview and leaving them there so you can go party with your friends (as has been known to happen). The circumstances matter.
the Conster
@John Cole:
It’s a slow slow train, but it’s moving on. Everybody’s got a ticket.
ted
@Rock: Yeah, that’s what I thought the story was leading up to, but as the segment drew to a close I knew it was not to be.
Did 60 Minutes get some sternly worded emails from law firms?
jayackroyd
@different-church-lady:
Front running is illegal. It’s insider trading. A brokerage firm gets an order that’s going to move the price, and places an order on its own account in the opposite direction, first. That’s trading on information known only to the executing firm. I never understood why HFT is legal; it’s clearly front running.
But, watching this, what makes it legal seems to be that the firm executes the incoming trade first, and then executes the offsetting trade using a faster conduit, so it places its order after the customer’s but does so in such a way that the firm’s order gets filled first. That’s why the hero could never get an order filled. HIS broker had gotten there first and bought up some of the stock offered at that price.
Sourmash
So correct me if I’m wrong, but the Masters of the Universe: hardcore hedgies, bulk traders, commodity scalpers and the like are getting screwed and we’re supposed to care because…why? I’m reminded of the old Cheech and Chong complaint: “Hey man! Somebody ripped off that thing I ripped off…”
OK, it’s wrong, if not illegal, and I’m sure we all pay a price for their leveraging of an unfair advantage. But if Goldman and the others who Lewis mentioned are whining about it, the “Flash Boys”, whoever they are, are making all the right enemies as far as I’m concerned.
slag
Rooting for injuries on this one.