Archive for October, 2008

It's the terrorists, stupid!

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

I'm astonished that nobody has pointed the blame at terrorists for the current economic woes. I'm the last person on earth to subscribe to any conspiracy theory, but it would make a lot of sense, wouldn't it?

Our "Al-Quaeda" chums are sworn enemies of our western culture, citing capitalist greed as being the root of all evil (well, they've got a point there). They've tried chucking bombs, crashed a few planes, ranted on websites – all with little effect. So why not trash our system from the inside and play the western world at its own game: financial trading.

Derivatives exchanges have "market makers" – a bunch of traders paid by the exchanges to inject liquidity into the market. They flood the market with orders that will never quite trade to give the illusion to other traders of a healthy market. Where are these people trading from? Which country would be awash with cash from recent high oil prices…Saudi Arabia? Am sure that equity markets have similar systems – all these complex financial products that are available to affluent, anonymous global traders.

All they would have to do is buoy up the markets, pull the plug and watch it all come crashing down. Sound familiar?