As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Although seeing as they have all that wealth and power, there's a considerable amount of "the people" that would rather side with them and get some crumbs from the table rather than none which seems to be a greater stumbling block in reaching a more honest, equal society.

As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Oh, make it so, make it soon.

As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Those people" (all of us) are taking a very long time thinking about acting and the masters of the universe are still laughing all the way to their private islands.
They've never had it so good and we've never been as cowed, cowardly or just plain stupid!

I occasionally have a kickabout in the park, but I'm not a real footballer.

If the BBC interviewed me, as a representative of professional footballers, about my opinions on Tevez not wanting to come on for Man City, they would be rightfully pilloried.

And if, despite the fact that it later turned out that I can do half a keepy-uppy at best, you agreed with my comments and thought they were a useful indicator of anything, that would make you rather gullible - wouldn't it?

Rastani is small potatoes, but he's a real trader.

No he's not. He's a plonker, as Del Boy would say. He lives in a drab semi in Bexleyheath owned by his girlfriend and her bank

He is a business owner, a 99pc shareholder in public speaking venture Santoro Projects. Its most recent accounts show cash in the bank of £985. After four years trading net assets are £10,048 - in the red.

He's never worked in the City, he's not registered with the FSA, and he's about as much of a "trader" as the bloke selling greengroceries in my local farmers' market.

So there goes your theory.

(Someone at the BBC needs to get fired over this, if they have not been already: utterly pathetic research... or complicity).

He's a real trader alright, but not a very good one. His net worth after 4 years of trading is -£4,000, so I wouldn't put much faith in his predictions. He also lives in his girlfriend's house and made these predictions earlier this year:

[4th of august ]"Rumour is that a major financial institution is on the brink of collapse. You heard it here first"

[5th of august] "Get ready for an EXPLOSION soon on the US markets!"

none of this came true.

So the BBC in effect Yes Man-ed itself? Ha!

He dared to tell the truth(, even if he isn't the real Mc Coy). Heads must roll.

Meanwhile I'm off to read the latest inanely fine detail about what some over-paid footballer's been up to, watch some asstd rubbish on Sky, or play another round of ZapaTrader on-line.

He's a trader in the same way that I'm a fund manager because I own a few shares or a professional photographer because I once sold a photo.

Sounds more like a professional bullshitter. I wonder where the Beeb dub him up from and why they thought he was worth interviewing. Does no-one in the production team know anything about finance?

Traders and neo-liberalists are the new Politburo.

We are not free.

George Osborne is on a par with Rastani:

Not very bright, never done a real day's work in his short privileged life, and a right little banker.

Yet he is Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Michael Moore gets celebrated for his statement, eh? I hate to be the bearer of a more cynical perspective, but here it goes" Occupy Wall Street will probably fade into oblivion rather soon-ish"..

Any social movement driven by a majority of Middle Class folks is bound to dissolve in inefficiency. I've seen it happen all over Latin America with social protests (we are sort of pioneers in this kind of popular unrest) and as soon as the Middle Classes (who are the ones that attract the media attention and create the momentum) get some cosmetic improvement, they go home and quickly forget "the revolution".

Many of these protests are driven by sense of entitlement (again, sorry to be a bore, but it's the entitlement of Middle Class folks have to "access to stuff", be it jobs, luxury spending, vacations, etc.). And because they are driven by a sense of entitlement and not by class and or racial solidarity, it is that their "ideals" quickly go down the drain as soon as they feel their entitlement is no longer under threat.

You just wait until Obama addresses the Wall Street crowd and the majority of folks feel represented and they get a warm fuzzy feeling at the promises made. They'll quickly go back home and even though no real change took place, they get to have a sense of achievement.

For the sake of poor folks in need, I sure hope I am wrong about my cynicism.

We all know about the hypocrisy of the rich. That line in their exclusive shops and restaurants of, 'if you have to ask how much then you can't afford it!' Yet when it comes to taxes, or providing for the less fortunate, they are counting their small change like a little old man with a tiny purse.

The thing with Rastani is he has swallowed the entire culture of the insiders. hook, line and sinker and thinks that by speaking to it he can make it true for himself also.
We believe he is who says he is even if he hasn't been successful, because we have all heard this sorry money grubber speak from so many on so many levels in every pub and club across the land.

I think it's time that if they really want to live in this polite and civilized land of ours we say to them, if you have to argue how much tax, then you can't afford it, so find somewhere else. We're pretty exclusive here and very fussy about who we allow through our doors.

I'm sorry but who are you?

He might be a silly deluded little man but that doesn't mean he isn't perfectly capable of telling the truth and the fact is the bankers at the top always win and they really dont give a toss about anyone else because money is the only personality they will ever posess.

And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Unfortunately they have all the power and lots of guns and all the police. And all the prisons. So there's a lot they can do.

I get where he's coming from, although I'm not in any position to risk financial trading (being completely clueless with money), I'd much rather be in a position to make money off the back of a recession if I could than sit back and complain about it. I don't resent traders like him or other bankers for the state of the economy - they're loaded (well, apparently he isn't but hey) and most of us aren't. Good for them.

As a person with such delusions of grandeur I think he would make an excellent candidate for the apprentice.

He does speak the truth though.

Never heard of the Yes Men, so I took it to be real and didn't at any point think it wasn't.

People had convinced themselves that the youtube video of the older scam was the same bloke even though it undoubtedly didn't look anything like him.

Whether he is small or big fry, he belongs to and worships the Temple of Greed that this country has become.

What came out of his mouth isn't any different to what is swimming around in the minds of every individual in the polluted Square Mile.

The sort of people who laugh at the outrage their continual bonuses cause because no one can do anything about it and the same people who have the biggest begging bowl in the history of the country filled on demand.

The same people that think that pushing up the price of basic essentials for the global population is fine as long as they make money and irrespective of the suffering they cause, and betting on destroying a business that could result in the loss of the employees livelihoods is just another day in the office.

What I find more scary is those that thought it was a hoax, they actually think that people like this aren't walking around our streets.

I'm sorry but who are you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI

For those who want to learn more about the Yes Men's most famous prank. I think this is a genius idea, myself...

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I was about to ask whether any one took the vile, publicity seeker jabba-the-hut lookalike Michael Moore seriously then realised where I was.

The thing that I find confusing about this whole economic crisis, and the repeated moves to quantitatively ease by the governments of this world is I don't have any savings, no one I know has any savings, we're all in debt.

The only way I lose out is after the banks our bailed is the way it impacts the services my community and I depend on when the proverbial austerity drive kicks in. I can't see how I benefit, and I don't know who benefits from the bailing -apart from people who have in excess of £50,000 in savings (I understand the government underwrite loses up to that amount) So can any one tell me why they keep doing it, given most of the worlds population don't have savings it doesn't seem very democratic. I understand they're about to do it again to rescue the eurozone.

DocMolotov

29 September 2011 11:04AM

He might be a silly deluded little man but that doesn't mean he isn't perfectly capable of telling the truth

Erm ... yes it does mean exactly that.

Now if he had been Jesse Livermore, there was a genuine trader who prayed for recessions.

But he, of course, does not fit into the "narrative" that nasty things/people only started happening after 1979.

As for this bozo, well ... he seems to have been dredged up by the BBC in order to support Milliband's half-baked comments about "predators" and what-not.

All I can say is that if he is the best example of a "predator" that the BBC could find, then that will have done no favours to Milliband.

Wow, everyone getting very excited about your basic 'bloke down the pub' bore. I'm suprised he didn't add "Stands to reason, don't it" at the end.
Cue the usual band of Nathan Barley meets Wolfie Smiths pile in.

This guy is not FSA approved, so cant work in the city you can look up persons below.

He's just an idiot doing what anyone else can do.

To Michael Moore's point, I wonder has he adjsuted for the fact that Gates and Buffet are giving everything away?

https://www.fsa.gov.uk/register/indivSearchForm.do;jsessionid=73334fbea11b40b1a123f4440a711d42.s6fNml1Ka38InBbv-ArJrwTPoNCNa30Ocybtah0IaNuIahiIbh0IaNfwmxiInxiObk9ynhvybMSHc30Ka2aToi5hch0Na2TSn7bvq70KawTAqQ4InQXQ-BjF8NaQah8Qc2bMnkrDqRfzqwbMnkrDqRfzqwbynknvrkLOlQzNp65In0__

I thought this guy was just telling us what most us already knew\presumed?!

Regardless of this guys pedigree I found it quite refreshing in as much as 'we' got a bit of honesty for once, and not this "No, no, it's not like that, really" crap we get from financial instutions and goverments elsehwere.

"He might be a silly deluded little man but that doesn't mean he isn't perfectly capable of telling the truth "

Sooo - provided the silly deluded little man agrees with your world viewpoint he is right, but if a silly deluded man disagrees with you then he is a charlatan. Says it all really !

Paulson's firm had a major, immediate and provable impact, and there's no telling how his millions of victims might have reacted.

Paulson had no victims. He bet against all the liars and spivs who were pumping the US sub-prime market because he could see there was no value in it. He made millions for his investors and himself because once the BS was stripped away everyone else agreed with him that there was no value. If there were real value, he'd have lost his shirt.

SoundMoney

29 September 2011 10:47AM

Rastani is small potatoes, but he's a real trader.

No he's not. He's a plonker, as Del Boy would say. He lives in a drab semi in Bexleyheath owned by his girlfriend and her bank

He is a business owner, a 99pc shareholder in public speaking venture Santoro Projects. Its most recent accounts show cash in the bank of £985. After four years trading net assets are £10,048 - in the red.

He's never worked in the City, he's not registered with the FSA, and he's about as much of a "trader" as the bloke selling greengroceries in my local farmers' market.

So there goes your theory.

(Someone at the BBC needs to get fired over this, if they have not been already: utterly pathetic research... or complicity).

. . . . .

Haha well yes quite!

This one ranks up there with when the BBC wheeled in a mini cab driver waiting for a pick-up in reception and asked him loads of questions on air about a legal judgement given against Apple Inc, over music copyright LINK

Anyone can become a trader anyway you only need about £300 to start so this guy isn't exactly buying or selling 100's of millions worth of stocks really.
I thought he was quite funny in a financial Armageddon sorta way....

Who is he employed by?

If he's claiming to be an "independent trader" - who did he used to work for?

I only ask because you can't just suddenly decide to be a trader. It's like suddenly claiming you're a consultant physician, having never worked in a hospital.

People spend years fighting their way onto trading desks in major financial institutions and proving themselves by making a lot of money for those institutions and their shareholders - otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to be the 'books' of those institutions.

So: where did the bloke used to work? And if he hasn't got a CV, what does he really - really - know about how it all works? What's his special knowledge?

DocMolotov:

He might be a silly deluded little man but that doesn't mean he isn't perfectly capable of telling the truth and the fact is the bankers at the top always win and they really dont give a toss about anyone else because money is the only personality they will ever posess.

Don't get hysterical - unless this bloke really has inside knowledge of "how the system works", everything he said isn't "the truth", it's just a load of old guff which finds an easy target with people who want to believe it.

MickGJ:

I'm sorry but who are you?

Absolutely - what is someone's opinion worth, when they won't sign their name to it?

It's just all a bit sad and silly really, especially when a real inside opinion from someone who has been at the top of trading or corporate finance for years would count for a lot. The Yes Men is just a publicity stunt which demeans the debate.

Just like the Internet Explorer IQ level story http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14389430 this is seriously poor quality control by the BBC. I'm a supporter of the Corporation, but interviewing a non-entity attention seeker like Rastani, then failing to 'fess up, is pathetic.

Bankers and traders are the last people who want a recession, they are already losing jobs and bonuses are down.

Shambouli:

Anyone can become a trader anyway you only need about £300 to start so this guy isn't exactly buying or selling 100's of millions worth of stocks really. I thought he was quite funny in a financial Armageddon sorta way....

That's not being a trader, that's opening a spread betting account.

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Thanks Jess, so it seems he is a bit of a Walter Mitty after all..

As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Tick.........tock..............tick...............tock................tick................tock..............tick...........tock..........tick...............tock............

I don't see the issue. He speaks the truth were others tout fibs. He didn't cause this next stage of the GFC but why should he not gain from it?

If he has the skills of course!

DocMolotov

He might be a silly deluded little man but that doesn't mean he isn't perfectly capable of telling the truth

Indeed. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

What came out of his mouth isn't any different to what is swimming around in the minds of every individual in the polluted Square Mile.

The sort of people who laugh at the outrage their continual bonuses cause because no one can do anything about it and the same people who have the biggest begging bowl in the history of the country filled on demand.

This sort of bollocks is what really demeans the debate. Halo, you are aware that there are thousands and thousands of people in your first category that have nothing to do with the second. Don't you?

The cynic in me thinks that the Yes Men would say this wouldn't they? The almost sublime and spooky close resemblance to Jude Finisterra, the pattern of speech.... I do wonder if the Yes Men want the BBC to say it's legit, so they can get them again, and again...

"And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it."

Nice words, but not going to happen really. It's an unfortunate fact that in capitalist societies, some people become so rich it's obscene, while others live in poverty.

But is there any alternative?

A century ago, Russia asked that same question, and the answer it came up with didn't exactly solve its problems, but created a load more.

Sorry ..."Aren't you?" not "Don't you?"

And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Wanna bet? They'll be able to bribe the police, the military, the judiciary, anyone with the means to keep our money in their pockets. Still, that didn't help the Ceaucescus and with a bit of luck it won't help the 400 either.

Beneluk:

Go on, then.

Yawn.

How about just calming down, stopping claiming that we're suddenly in some sort of Armageddon in 2011 because there is finally some sense that the UK can't spend beyond its means, and getting on with life?

Another keyboard warrior.

baldonbald:

I don't see the issue.

He is a fraud who has never done what he claims to have done.

If you're the sort of person who wants to believe someone who has been exposed as a fraud, then that's up to you - but he's still a fraud, and you're now a sucker.

jonnyboy71
29 September 2011 11:25AM
Beneluk:

Go on, then.

Yawn.

How about just calming down, stopping claiming that we're suddenly in some sort of Armageddon in 2011 because there is finally some sense that the UK can't spend beyond its means, and getting on with life?

Another keyboard warrior.

You may want to take another look at who is doing the claiming. All I am trying to point out is that we've been waiting rather a long time for the Rise of the Keyboard Warrior, and it doesn't seem to be any closer to happening.

Personally, I don't think much will change until someone in charge has the balls to try a few "traders" or banksters for economic treason.

Treason's one of those few offences that you can still be hung for, in theory.

They have so much wealth, so much arrogance, so much hubris, I don't think much else will convince them to stop doing what they do.

BTW, Miliband's right on this one - we need to distinguish between good business and bad business. Yes, it will be hard to delineate, but so what?

The desperation of people to discredit this bloke and smear the man not the info is hardly surprising --its standard right wing stuff

There's a lot to lose and its indicative of the state of the mass media in this country and the anglo world generally that smear is their favourite tactics against anyone who happens to speak outside the allowed frame

What this guy said isn't big news to those who can see for themselves and can read articles on the net --

its the reaction that's interesting

panic in the house of thieves.

Takes two to tango.

When the market is going up, there are those who sell who are betting it is going down, and vice versa.

Never gets a mention, does it?

Benulek:

You may want to take another look at who is doing the claiming. All I am trying to point out is that we've been waiting rather a long time for the Rise of the Keyboard Warrior, and it doesn't seem to be any closer to happening.

I have, and I will!

Totally agree with you.

All the commenters who are saying "this guy isn't a trader" are missing the point of this article completely.

The article says "it doesn't matter who this guy is - what he said is true". And the writer backs it up by talking about how Goldman Sachs made money from the sub-prime crisis.

Of course most reputable, professional traders would not say what this guy said on tv, but that doesn't mean they aren't thinking it.

@ karaline

So can any one tell me why they (governments) keep doing(bailing out banks), given most of the worlds population don't have savings it doesn't seem very democratic.

You are right it is not democratic. It is because goverment officials and bank officials are now interchangable. For example in the US, Goldman Sachs supplies officials to US treasury, and goverment representatives that support policies favourable to the financial sector are rewarded with highly paid consultancy and board positions.
On top of that the financial sector is threatening total ecomomic collapse if governments don't protect private sector debt. So countries are beggaring themselves and their populations to support the financial sector and protecting the bankers et al from the consequences of their risky activities. We are now engaged in a class war, between the majority of us whose income depends on employment in the real economy (teachers, plumbers, administrators, etc) and the financial oligarchs of the world. Until the majority wakes up to this fact, we will all continue to see a decline in living standards for ourselves and our children over the next decade and beyond.

There's a character who posts on here sometimes called investmentbanker who has a similar Mitty-esque quality to Rastani.

I wonder....

This man was clearly a chancer and a shameless self-publicist. He wasn't particularly eloquent and his tone was obnoxious.

I don't see why his main point is considered so scandalous, however. It's certainly unpleasant to crow about a recession in which people will lose their jobs, but he doesn't want a recession for its own sake, he wants the stock market crash that it will bring on. A lower stock market is a perfectly reasonable thing to want. As with any other asset, high stock prices benefit only those people who already own lots of stocks. For anyone looking to buy stocks, lower prices are clearly better. It's the same with house prices.

It's all very well complaining about people "losing their life savings," but a lot of people, especially young people, don't have any savings. Rather, they're just starting to save, and the higher the stock market, the harder it is for them to do so. Anyone whose wealth is based on high asset prices is only wealthy by virtue of impoverishing the other people who want or need the assets the wealthy own.

I work in banking (at a very low level) and now that I heard this segment I wonder what the fuss is about. What he said was just obvious common sense. I don't care what he earns or who he is, it's pretty obvious to me that

a) people can make money wether the market goes up and down - it's the aggregate that loses, and of course the traded companies

b) of course traders don't care how to fix things AS TRADERS. They might care a lot as human beings but when they sit down at their desks their job is to make money, and if it means shorting, then see point a.

c) Sure, some people get rich in a recession, but they are the smart and lucky. It's the prisoner's dilemma. If everybody does the rational thing, everybody wins. If one ruthless guy does the ruthless thing, he wins and everybody else loses. If everybody does the ruthless thing, everybody loses. So yeah, most of us will be wiped out, and a few who can will get rich.

Our Chancellor - dear Gideon - has also made some idiotic comments in his time. From 2006, a few months before it all started to go wobbly:

Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking. . . . [The Irish] have freed their markets, developed the skills of their workforce, encouraged enterprise and innovation and created a dynamic economy. They have much to teach us, if only we are willing to learn. ref

Unlike proper science, in the world of economics you can line up ten fools willing to shout their mouths off, and one of them will likely be near the mark. That doesn't make him a seer. He is still a fool.

The problem for so many of the so-called experts (like Brown and Osborne) is that there were plenty of respectable people calling for caution in 2006, but no one in authority listened.

If he's a 'trader' he's not a very good one, so why the BBC thought he had a well informed opinion worth airspace is beyond me.

'The desperation of people to discredit this bloke and smear the man not the info is hardly surprising --its standard right wing stuff'

Its not about smearing someone its about someone who hardly seems qualified to give an opinion being revered on the TV Not only that, a radio phone in had a whole discussion piece about this guy and what he said and then there are articles like this. But, he seems an amateur,what makes him better qualified than others to air his opinion, and lastly, where on earth did the BBC dig him up from?

So this guy is a financial nobody. How about this one -

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-28/euro-is-beyond-rescue-unicredit-s-szalay-berzeviczy-says.html

He is global head of securities services at Italy’s biggest lender, UniCredit S predicting economic chaos.

The guy came out and stated the obvious Buy Low then Sell High. Well that's a pretty obvious tenet of making money as any in business can testify.
Treating him as representative of an industry though is tosh, particularly if he needs /dreams of economic collapse as the only way he's going to make any money. If he was any cop, he'd be capable to making cash in any market.

I don't know of any bankers or traders who share his sentiments. Lets get over the popular scapegoat misconceptions - there are some wealthy people in the industry but they're not in the majority, if there are large bonuses being handed out then that's also in the minority, there is the constant threat of redundancy and unemployment in a recession for people in banking so I very much doubt there are many dreaming of more pain and economic cuts. Think about it, the money that's been made in the industry was made on a rising tide, not during these straightened times.

JessicaReed
29 September 2011 11:12AM
For those who want to learn more about the Yes Men's most famous prank. I think this is a genius idea, myself...

I know this has been done to death before but...I think the Yes Men were unpleasantly irresponsible about Bhopal. Not, of course, criminally irresponsible, greedy, and downright inhuman, like Union Carbide/Dow, but still irresponsible.

To those who say Rastani is not qualified to give his opinion, have a think about whether a trader who works for a major institution would even be allowed to be this honest.

He is absolutely correct in what he says (and I used to work for a financial institution) so I would know. Goldman Sachs does rule the world and traders make more money quicker in a depressed market than otherwise. Sure, we might not like it but it is a fact.

Hopefulcyclist, the dog on the street could tell you that the place is going through economic turmoil. This is no news flash.

@karaline - 29 September 2011 11:13AM

The thing that I find confusing about this whole economic crisis, and the repeated moves to quantitatively ease by the governments of this world is I don't have any savings, no one I know has any savings, we're all in debt.

Yes. You all blindly followed what the banksters and their propaganda machines told you to do and got into debt.

And now the prudent, the savers and the hard-working are bailing you out by having a lot of inflation erode the value of their savings and your debt.

You lucky, lucky thing. Anyone would think you were doing rather well out of it.

Halo572 29 September 2011 11:09AM
Never heard of the Yes Men, so I took it to be real and didn't at any point think it wasn't. What came out of his mouth isn't any different to what is swimming around in the minds of every individual in the polluted Square Mile.

Halo, you're the gift that just keeps on giving. More please. Cracking up here.

This guy is a YES MAN!!! no matter what they say...he is all over their videos. Its not hard to find out who he is, people!

WheatFromChaff -

" He might be a silly deluded little man but that doesn't mean he isn't perfectly capable of telling the truth

Erm ... yes it does mean exactly that."

Erm...no it doesn't. It might mean that he is unreliable, but actually what he said is demonstrably true, where investment banks have bet on companies going bankrupt and people defaulting on houses etc. So your pithy littel comment is wrong.

You used to make some quite good comments. Shame.

Why did the BBC give him air time though? Are they that desperate for a story?

Regardless of whether this guy is a 'genuine' trader or not the attitude he expresses are the authentic voice of some in the City as anyone who has friends or colleagues working as traders know all too well. Behind the scenes this is exactly how some of them speak. Not usually horrible people, they just have an inability to link up the way they behave with the negative effects their behaviour and decisions have in the real world and therefore don't care beyond what they themselves gain. No way to run a society of course which is why it's time for our governments to remember that banking and financial services including trading are an important part of a successful capitalist economy but not the sole point of a successful society.

I think it is good to hear that Mr Rastani is actually not very successful as it illustrates what a mess we have got ourselves into. Many, many people support some of the worst excesses of capitalism including an unrestrained free market and tax evasion/avoidance because they aspire to be one of the very few benefiting from those excesses, Mr Rastani included. Self defeating of course and the proverbial penny is dropping right around the western world. Not before time.

It would seem that there is a degree of urgency in ensuring this guy is discredited, yet no one has come forward to call his words lies.

I have no idea who we owe or why we owe them nor who they are or how they got there?

All I know this that the are companies giving out credit ratings for countries that will affect how billions of lives are lived and not one member of their board has ever appeared in a democratic election.

@flaviadzodan

Unfortunately, I don't think you are being cynical and tend to agree with you. The middle class imperative is hardly revolution and middle class appeasement is too often just a matter of finding the right price tag.

Alessio Rastani isn't real. Oh, I'm sure there is a small-time, smug, self-centred home trader with illusions of money and delusions of insight who goes by that name. But just to listen to the nonsense he spouted proves that Alessio Rastani the wise financial pundit is a figment of one person's imagination.

Neither Goldman Sachs nor all the financial institutions combined run the world. They are just one part of a complex, intricate system with many moving parts, one that we and our ancestors created and allowed to flourish.

It's called Capitalism.

And all those who cry and moan about it and act the victim, and those whose cynicism takes the place of a commitment to an alternative, do as much to perpetuate it as those who still truly believe that capitalism is a credible and benign system.

What truth did this man speak? To any person who has the slightest knowledge of trading, he spoke in useless generalities. His comment about GS wasn't a revealing statement; it was a braggart's boast. He wanted it to be true because he sees himself as their ilk. If it is true for them, it is true for him. Look at me, I'm a master of the universe. Poor fool.

hoddle1

George Osborne is on a par with Rastani:

Not very bright, never done a real day's work in his short privileged life, and a right little banker.

Yet he is Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Like him or not, Osborne has a legitimacy of a different order of magnitude, namely that the voters chose to give him that job.

He's a real trader alright, but not a very good one. His net worth after 4 years of trading is -£4,000, so I wouldn't put much faith in his predictions. He also lives in his girlfriend's house and made these predictions earlier this year:

If he ONLY lost £4k over the last four years and doesn't have any money in property, I'd say he's well ahead of the average and pretty astute.

Perhaps we should be taking MORE advice from this guy.

But Goldman, as the Levin report makes clear, remains an ascendant company precisely because it used its canny perception of an upcoming disaster (one which it helped create, incidentally) as an opportunity to enrich itself, not only at the expense of clients but ultimately, through the bailouts and the collateral damage of the wrecked economy, at the expense of society.

All this guy was doing was grovelling at the feet of Goldman Sachs in the desperate hope they would hire him because he had the right mindset.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511

Given that the UK does not have a diversity within its economy, Mr James Dyson (for example) opting to sack Professional Engineers within the UK and relocating manufacturing capacity to Malaysia, and that its core strength resides in financial services and Risk Management isn't the ambivalence towards the interviewee simply symptomatic of the "Damn The Bankers" tirade which developed into a frenzy amongst the last Labour Government.

Although such comments emanated from Mr John McFall (Chair of the Treasury Select Committee at the time) as with John Mann (member of the Treasury Select Committee), the frenzy was most notable amongst Labour MPs and Liberals.

Sad really., Goal Distortion - Labour in particularly trying to sell the myth that Gordon "I Saved The World" Brown played no part in setting the UK's Financial Regulatory System, ably assisted by Ed Balls, with flawed policy measures rammed through by Labour MPs.

Outside of the guy himself the message is simplistic to the point of being useless. 'Traders make money in a bear market' Well some do, and some don't. There are many traders in amany markets with many trading strategies. Quite a lot of those markets have regualtory controls on shorting. Often traders will take no outright position, e.g. volatility trading.

There are a lot of problems to solve and simplistic posturing and placards have no place in the serious discussion about solutions.

Unpleasant fraud though this man was...I am surprised that the distaste expressed for raw capitalism is so often reserved for people in the financial markets. What about the legions of people involved in selling you crap that you don't need? Filling your mind with cheap ambitions.

Yes, this trader is odious, if he is a trader at all and not just a fantasist, but it is the selfishness of motive that upsets people. If he was simply making money and not pointing out that he doesn't give a fuck about anybody else then he would simply be another capitalist in a capitalist world. Don't worry about this guy. Worry about actual capitalists who want you to eat more trans fats, fall in love with shiny things, harbour all manner of consumer fantasies and who are ripping you off, day in day out.

As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Predictions of a new order of fairness and reason taking over America have been around almost as long as the country itself. If a national change ever happens, it certainly won't be during my lifetime; partly because it's not The American Way, and for too many people The American Way trumps all - and partly because American society is too vast and disparate to have such a widespread and cohesive upheaval.

It doesn't matter if he's small fry. What he says is spot on, it exaggerates for effect but is essentially right.

Which is why of course you have the right piling into this thread. Art is a lie that tells the truth.

As Buddha9 says, it's the reaction to him that's most telling.

SoundMoney
29 September 2011 11:51AM

'Osborne has a legitimacy of a different order of magnitude, namely that the voters chose to give him that job.'

No, the voters didn't. I voted Lib Dem (never again) and I certainly didn't do so in order to have Osborne as Chancellor. No one party won the election, all lost including the Conservatives...a fact they regularly and deliberately forget.

LordGlenGall -

"When the market is going up, there are those who sell who are betting it is going down, and vice versa.

Never gets a mention, does it?"

Actually, there are plenty of people who regularly suggest that the stock exchange in general is a amoral casino. Where have you been?

That said, NOT having shares in a company you think will not be successful is significantly different from betting on a company being unsuccessful. You simply don't lose money in the first instance, where you gain money in the second.

Be interesting to see if the people can rise up and take it back from those 400 people that Michael Moore identifies. However I'm also aware of Huxley's theories in that the truth is getting buried by trivia and too much information, even on blogs like these there are so many different points of views and arguments that it makes any kind of resistance seem a whimsical thought. Secondly we all know that with money comes power and surely this would mean that the wealthiest people will use whatever power they have to aggressively protect what they have?
Finally consider that there are many fundamentist supporters of Western capitalism, there are many people in the corpotate sector who subscribe to the consumerist ideology that is peddled (how else could they justify what they do?), the same people who believe we went into Iraq and Afghanistan for moral reasons. There's a lot of people who want a voice of authority to tell them what to believe,it's far easier to follow a path taken by others after all....

"....but he's a real trader..." Yeah, whose girlfriend owns his house, and has a bank account in the red - some "trader".

This shows the gullibility of BBC hiring policies - last week on the One Show they had a "dog training expert" who had no qualifications and is now being investigated by the RSPCA for cruelty. This "trader" had no money, no FSA registration, and no background in the city.

I think someone in BBC HR should be for the chop.

Halo572 29 September 2011 11:09AM
What came out of his mouth isn't any different to what is swimming around in the minds of every individual in the polluted Square Mile.

Are you 12 years old ?

@hopefulcyclist

Your last post prompted me to write this but please do not think this is directed specifically at you.

Can anyone please explain to me the logic at work here.

First, nearly everyone believes the bankers to be unreliable, selfish, venal, immoral, grasping, lying, arrogant, etc, etc bastards (for the purposes of this comment, 'bastards' has no gender connotations).

Yet, when one of these spawns of the devil says something that suits what we want to hear (even if it is bad news) they are suddenly reliable?

Does anyone else think it is a bit perverse to complain that we are being severely and deeply shafted and then look for validation of our circumstances from the same people holding the big stick that's in our arse?

Or is it just me?

The irony , of course, is that Rastani is now a bona fide celebrity and will soon make his dreamt-of millions from guest appearances on Big Brother, I'm Not A Celebrity, Strictly Come Wanking, etc etc.

The desperation of people to discredit this bloke and smear the man not the info is hardly surprising --its standard right wing stuff

Yes, very good.

Imagine if a self-proclaimed military expert waltzed on to your screen and claimed to know the very fundamental truth about the conflicts in the middle east. Perhaps he had attended Sandhurst and excelled at 'dry-exercises' on the Brecon Beacons. But, were you to take a peak at his actual experience you discover that he has never actually been to the source of conflict, has never conducted an excercise and his entire military- ouevre rests upon second hand evidence, chatting with friends, watching Stephen Seagal movies and playing computer games.

But he's got a lot of chutzpah, is good looking and has mastered the basic sales technique of looking like he's 'shooting from the hip' - so people swallow it whole.

And the fact that people take him seriously demonstrates why we are in trouble in the first place.

Hucksters, snake oil salesman and stupid self-promoters have taken over.
This man is a champion of the idiots.

We are living in the age of The Twerps.

That it wasn't a prank comes as no surprise really, I think everyone knows this is how traders operate and feel. The only surprise is that Rastani was dumb enough to confess it on live TV.

It's a bit like that football player who admitted to picking up a booking in order to be suspended for the next game against a weaker team. We all know it goes on, but only a total idiot rubs your face in it.

Taking this idiot's word as gospel, is like quoting a mad mullah, and saying that he speaks for all 1.5bn Muslims, who all want to destroy the West and bring in Shariah law etc

The Yes Men are heroes.

Rastani pulled off a great stunt very much in the Yes Men style and he deserves credit for this. I consider this stunt to be an inspiration for all who want to do something about the financial crisis.

We all need to get out and take action now.

In the 2011 annual report of Guardian Media Group (The Guardian's parent company) it shows that the Group made £17.8m of profits on their Investment Fund in the year ending March 2011. Perhaps the journalists should be asking the question how much of this was made from profiting on collapsed markets?

Lovely story in the Guardian yesterday, told by Liam Byrne. He's on the motorway going to Ikea in a traffic jam, when there's a knock on the window. Some guys are going along the hard shoulder collecting money: "David Cameron and George Osborne have been kidnapped by bandits and they're demanding a ransom of £1 million." "Oh", says Byrne "How much are people generally giving?" The reply: "Most people have been giving a gallon of petrol."

:)

Jonnyboy71

Absolutely - what is someone's opinion worth, when they won't sign their name to it?

Careful - by that measurement, almost everything BTL in Cif would be worthless. Oh, hold on...

SecondChoice:

Nobody is looking for validation from bankers/the banking sector. What this man has said is demonstrably true. It's news because someone in banking has said it. (not confirmed it - it doesn't need any more confirming unless you are really very very dense).

EC2Welshman:

Actually, he hasn;t just lost £4000 (or £10000, depending on who you listen to). He is that much in debt. Who knows how much he has actually lost?

I hope there's a few victims of the recession waiting for this guy down a dark alley.

Just knowing how you are controlled can be enough to set you free, you dont need to know the fine parts of structures, or their reflexive nature, you dont need to know the in's and out's of all systems, you dont even need to know who the main players are, All you need know is that people are gambling with your life, and with your childrens lives for profit, and the system in which they do it destroys democracy and any chance of saving those kids.

Call it predatory capitalism, call it unregulated free markets policy, call it a fraud, call it what it is, UNDEMOCRATIC, UNETHICAL and OLD SCHOOL. Its time the People controlled those systems, its also time political parties distanced themselves from those who would label you anti-business when secretly they sneer at your anti capitalist stance and would love to destroy you.

Making money and jobs only becomes capitalist when you choose to f*** the people over for a fast buck. So stand up to these investors and influences, stand up to the secret funders of 'grass roots' aka 'astro turf' organisations, stand up to the think tanks and hedge funds, Stand up for the people once in your miserable little lives.

He's probably been watching the Max Keiser report on RT, but MK is more amusing.

I've worked at The School and in the City and know that the majority of traders and MBAs don't behave like this - but - certainly I've met a few people who do.

Is it surprising that some traders disassociate their work from the reality of hard-working people outside of the financial district?

Halo572 29 September 2011 11:09AM
Never heard of the Yes Men,
so I took it to be real and didn't at any point think it wasn't.
What came out of his mouth isn't any different to what is swimming around in the minds of every individual in the polluted Square Mile.

I'm ill-informed,
And extremely gullible.
That allows me to make gross simplistic generalization about people I've never met.

~

As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

I challenge that view, they are far more subtle and insidious than that. These are the people who control what we watch, what we eat, the price of fuel, pretty much all the media, all the jobs, the price index on the exchange. These people control government policy and therefore by extension its institutions, that includes intelligence agencies, military, civil service and police.

The keep us ignorant and reasonably well fed then spoon feed us what they want us to hear keeping us all as mindless robots doing there bidding, enticing our consumerism with shit we don't need while trying to stop us ever asking 'who got shafted to make me these nice expensive shoes?'.

Yes this reads like conspiracy but we will never break these shackles because most of us don't know they exist!

The thing that really grates it the fact that he can talk so openly about, knowing that there is not a thing any one can do to stop it ! It's about time the banks stopped ruling and society had it's life back !!!

As common wisdom has always maintained, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Why the big kerfuffle?

This world needs more truth, whether people "are comfortable with it" or not.

@Imlessbiasedthanyou2

I think the point you're missing is that he isn't "in banking". He isn't an insider. He's a Walter Mitty type self publicist who has never worked for any of the financial institutions he criticises.

A senior doctor making a criticism of the health service is potentially news. Someone who claims to be an NHS insider but who isn't a doctor and who has never worked in the health service in any capacity is entitled to his view, but to represent it as a qualified view would be to mislead.

"It doesn't matter, he just told the truth" would be a fair comment, but not if your definition of "the truth" is just whatever affirms your existing beliefs.

@CharlesSurface

I occasionally have a kickabout in the park, but I'm not a real footballer.

If the BBC interviewed me, as a representative of professional footballers, about my opinions on Tevez not wanting to come on for Man City, they would be rightfully pilloried.

And if, despite the fact that it later turned out that I can do half a keepy-uppy at best, you agreed with my comments and thought they were a useful indicator of anything, that would make you rather gullible - wouldn't it?

Well whether we were gullible would depend on whether you were accurate, and if you were, then your limited experience would have no bearing on the actual validity of your statement.

Much as I hate the Gooners, even I have to admit the non-footballer Arsene Wenger has managed to navigate the game pretty well.

He said the truth and its not gonna change whether smbody believes him or not. I am making money month after month coz I know all this is true. Most of traders like me are doing it (of course with discipline and due diligence). In fact, if everybody starts believing him and act on it, I wont be able to make money. I am happy because most of the people are doubting his authenticity or whether he is a hotshot trader or not.... Well, I am again reiterating him. Prepare yourself !! . But I know.. very few will do so. rest would continue to discuss and discuss and discuss..... Well dats good for me at least (sounds antisocial ha, but its not!!)..

He's a windbag - a self-confessed attention-seeker.
The BBC fell for it because he said what they want to hear.
You fell for it for exactly the same reason.
Don't expect everyone else to be that stupid.
Grow up.
Let it go.

OK, so he's a lousy trader, but as far as I can see he told the truth about the way this world of ours is run. There are powerful people out there with a vested interest in seeing the world economic system collapse, because they do stand to make billions of dollars out of it.

He's right too on the fact that it's not governments who rule the world, but corporations like Goldman Sachs. Why else are successive governments, both here and in the US, spineless when it comes to reining in the bankers and the hedge fund managers in their wild pursuit of profits at any cost?

They'll bring in legislation to curb workers' rights at the drop of a hat, but they have obviously colluded all the way in bringing about the crisis in the Euro zone, and in the possible world wide collapse of all other currencies.

Naturally, when you tell the truth like this you get pilloried. It's always gone on; at one time they burned people at the stake for it, and even crucified one particular individual 2000 years ago for daring to point out the truths about the corruption that he saw being blatantly carried on.

This guy is no different. He'll be similarly pilloried by all and sundry with an interest in maintaining the illusion that we're a free and democratic people, with the power to remove those in power if we don't like their actions. In fact, we can't remove the true holders of power because they are in the shadows behind the throne. All Alessio Ridani has done, is to point out that fact.

It's not the first time the BBC have been suckered in this way:

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/article/1379/bbc-storm-as-two-of-bnps-most-notorious-activists-are-invite

I remember a Radio 4 programme about attitudes to Tony Blair in Portsmouth, in which a local SWP activist was interviewed under the guise of a "man in the street" ex-Labour supporter who had only just switched allegiance - without mentioning the fact that he had actually stood against Labour as a Socialist Alliance candidate.

Since then, I have no faith in BBC interviewees. Journalists must have their address books suffed wth numbers of extremists and nutters of all persuasion masquerading as normal members of the public.

Not to mention all the RCP-schooled "intellectuals" that crop up everywhere.

Perhaps I am not alone in considering that many of the bankers and financial whiz kids like this are crooks and gangsters who should be locked up.

If this is western capitalism then it is rotten to the core.

And to think that many of these bankers pay themselves huge bonuses to economies and destroy peoples lives just to make themselves big bucks.

It is just evil.

JustinCase2 -

I'm not suggesting that this man saying what he said is newsworthy. However, it is in the news, and my comment is that what he has said is demonstrably true. Not just my opinion.

"It doesn't matter, he just told the truth" would be a fair comment, but not if your definition of "the truth" is just whatever affirms your existing beliefs.

That is not my definition of the truth, just for your piece of mind.

The views being expressed in the interview are hardly new, radical or satirical. The trader Hugh Hendry has forged a media career (Newsnight, Question Time, feature articles in national newspapers etc.), by betting on the collapse of theGreek economy, various positions on the decline of the Euro, and a slowdown in the Chinese economy. His hedge fund has made £££ from taking the position that capitalism is going down the toilet and dear old Hugh quite openly fancies he can make a buck out of it.

Its always been clear. Its there for all of us to see. If we analyse our democratic capitalist system objectively the extremes, poverty and billionaires, are all symptomatic of a very ill and malfunctioning system. I think current ideas have expired their date and in urgent need of overhaul. When the top 10% controls more wealth than the rest put together, its obvious something is rotten.

We really are at turning points. Its almost a perfect storm of bad socio-economic-natural disasters going on (economic crises, famine, poverty, Japan hurricane/tsunami etc). Dont get me wrong, democracy and capitalism for better or worst are the best we have come out with, as its explore what its at core of human nature, greed, individualism, competition and most of all, it provides the one and only true stimulus we are all seem to be able to respond MONEY. But it urgently needs, its a massive upgrade - from a Windows to Apple, you know, simple, efficient, and more elegant.

He wasn't. Rastani is small potatoes, but he's a real trader. And he said nothing that would suggest otherwise; he simply described what he does, more honestly than a true insider would, but quite accurately. "Every night I dream of another recession," Rastani said, and explained that it's possible to make huge money from a big crisis even when millions of others lose their life savings, and worse.

Where are all the intelligent people in the world ?

The yes mentality has created a morass of non thinking clones who revile against common sense. They would rather cling to hope of being the last man standing than take the sensible way out !

Politics is the unscrupulous leading the ignorant into what they think is the land of milk and honey.

Blair and Brown destroyed the Labour Party due to their lack of knowledge, they were convinced that we could not sustain our economy by producing and so took on Thatcher's wet dream of market philosophy and the City. Brown's Mansion house speech prior to the crash reveals how sucked in he was. This also highlights how dangerous it is to have autocratic leadership like the current state of affairs in british politics. Blair and Brown knew that the voices of the left would not stand by and allow them to carry out their Neo-Liberal agenda, and so they have rigged conference to silence that dissent. This has meant the rapid decline
in support of the weakest and most vulnerable and the selling off of important state assets.

This Trader that has let the cat out of the bag has exposed what the left have been saying for generations, but the likes of Murdochs press, Mail, Times, express,and all the other right wing media, including the BBC and ITV have suppressed that point of view to maintain the status quo.

The tactics of character assassination have been employed to destroy politicians of principle like Tony Benn, and for those that don't know he was Viscount Stansgate and relinquished his title to take a seat in the house of commons, something no-one else has done, he was also responsible for the planning and founding of 'Britoil' our british oil company sold off by Thatcher just at the point when oil was coming ashore, because she said it is better in private hands, surprise , surprise the non thinking gullible public swallowed it hook line and sinker, some idiots even bought shares that they already owned because they would get a bonus discount of a few hundred pounds. Look at petrol prices now they have long lost the benefit those few hundred pounds.

Tell Ed Miliband that we are sick of being led by the nose by ignorant politicians spinning to chase votes and will not tolerate those who attack the poor whilst groveling to the richest and most powerful few,that are creating a living hell for everybody due to their greed and avarice.

Even when the truth is spoken in plain and direct English from someone who knows how it all works, like the insiders have known for decades and like ever increasing numbers of the mass public are beginning to understand as well, still little people come on here to ridicule the information and the person saying it and pretending it's all lala fantasy land.

Only these people will very soon be the tiny minority, when once they were the majority and everyone else who is awake, will trample on their comments and bring to justice the ones they seek to protect: The greedy and deeply inhuman souls who have zero conscience, empathy, compassion or shared moral values, who'll do and have done anything and everything, to stay rich, powerful and influential at the expense of everyone else, by legally, but immorally robbing people of their wealth and their freedoms via banking and governance.

This generation is unlike any before it. We have the internet to thank for that. The game has changed.
Their time in charge of how society is shaped, formed and dictated too is nearly up, but it must be done by legal and peaceful means. It can be done this way if there's collective solidarity to want to change things to benefit the whole, rather than a few. Relentless, mass collective actions, via peaceful protest and non-compliance.

Why is it that hedge funds betting against the housing market in the bubble get a load of flack for it? You would have to have been a complete mug not to if you had any sort of cash invested in it. Providing funds to sustain your business and stopping it going downhill in recession and the inevitable bubble-burst is good business practice.

Phud

Oh, make it so...

You are Captain Jean Luc Picard and I claim my £5.

Like him or not, Osborne has a legitimacy of a different order of magnitude, namely that the voters chose to give him that job.

What a Rastani' like statement. (Conservative share of the vote 2010: 32.4%, share of total electorate 23.5%).

The different order of magnitude is that more than 75% of the electorate did not give Osborne any mandate for his economic policies, yet the law considers this to be democratically acceptable.

When a small minority party with minority views, like the Conservatives rule, is it any wonder why people question the legitimacy of our democratic system?

Are the Yes men behind the Yes Dance?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyqUj3PGHv4

BURN IT ALL DOWN!!!!!

Seatrotter -

Isn't the problem that they intially went along with - and proppogated - the notion that the sub prime loans were responsibly rated, when in fact they were not?

(Some) then did a U turn and bet against the very investments that they were recommending to their clients.

and yet this paper has Deborah Orr going on about the so called markets and pandering to who the markets are, the rich and powerful

LIFEISAMIRROR

29 September 2011 12:34PM

BURN IT ALL DOWN!!!!!

Shouldn't you be buying the print version to use as kindling?

Any truth to rumours of secret meetings between premier investors and the treasury regarding watering down the Vickers recommendations anyone?

This rather sad, strange little man couldn't make money when the markets were surging; I very much doubt he'll be able to do so when they are tanking.

Anyone who takes seriously a (slight deranged) private day trader who clearly fantasises about working at Goldman Sachs needs to get out a bit more.

The BBC have made themselves look like a bunch of idiots for giving this man airtime.

Goldman Sachs is losing somehwre in the region of 25% of its headcount due to the current market condiitons. To proclaim they are benefitting from market turmoil overall is, frankly, stupid. The tinfoil hats are certainly out in force today.

So the only people entitled to pontificate are those who are ripping us off. We , the ignorant rest must not dare to have an opinion

I would certainly agree that Rastani was a fool for spouting his odious opinion on a national television broadcast. His self-serving peers in the banking world will not thank him for such a lapse into candour. Nevertheless, I believe he has done the rest of us a small favour with his salutary demonstration that bastards of this stripe are little more than psychopaths.

Let us not forget it.

Bluecloud:

We all need to get out and take action now.

Go on then.

All this focus on whether Alessio Rastani is or is not a hoax seems to have conveniently pushed aside the question of whether his ideas are meritorious.

There is an excellent analysis of the coverage and consequences of his BBC News interview at Mediolana: 'Alessio Rastani: Rogue Trader or Prophet of Doom?'

ballmoney

You can have an opinion. But if you self identify as 'ignorant' then don't expect anyone to listen to you.

A Revolution isn;t the answer, because you just get a different set of crooks in charge, but crooks with a history of physical violence. So what is the answer? Decent Government, perhaps?

Stockbrokers More Competitive, Willing To Take Risks Than Psychopaths: Study

Various studies have suggested that a certain kind of psychological profile gravitates toward the fast-paced, high-pressure environment of the trading floor -- and that this profile probably has more than a little in common with psychopathic personality, a clinical condition marked by gregariousness, impulsiveness, dishonesty and lack of empathy.

A recent study from the University of St. Gallen, in Switzerland, goes one step further. The research, led by forensics expert Pascal Scherrer and prison administrator Thomas Noll, finds that professional stock traders actually outperform diagnosed psychopaths when it comes to competitive and risk-taking behavior.

According to Der Spiegel, Scherrer and Noll had a group of 28 stockbrokers participate in various simulations and intelligence tests, and then compared their results to a group of psychopaths.

They found that the traders showed a higher degree of competitiveness than the psychopaths -- and that the traders were surprisingly willing to cause harm to their competitors if they thought it would bring them an advantage.

Scherrer and Noll are not the first to suggest a correlation between success on Wall Street and mental pathology. In 2005, a study found that traders who are unable to fully feel their emotions due to brain damage end up performing better on the market -- possibly because they experience less anxiety about risky trades.

At the time, one professor of neurology described such emotionally impaired traders as "functional psychopaths."

This guy simple reflects the total amorality of the current system, financial & corporate.

Once the courts decided corporations should be treated as if they were people with the same rights as individuals the circle was closed.
Now in a case of conflicting rights (with few exceptions) the individual invariably losses against the financial might of the corporations.
Those self same corporations along with their financial servers act without shame or concern for anyone or thing else.

The truth is generally they no longer serve their own communities.
In fact in many many instances they act in a hostile manner to the communities from which they came and are suposedly based.

....so what use are they to us?

Time for a radical rethink, I think.

Well, he's had his 15 minutes of fame - with a good agent he could probably make a mint on the minor celebrity circuit, maybe do a couple of reality shows.

Sorry. He lives in a £200,000 house in Bexleyheath owned by his partner and doesn't even have an FSA licence. In what sense can he speak with any authority on his subject?

Next up, Jordan on Wittgenstein. Not a prank.

"And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it."

I sure hope so, I've heard that the most booming defence industry right now is the development of crowd-control weapons.

But it's certainly worth a try to amputate that human cancer.

I really can't understand you people . You all seem to love the opportunity trash others. It is really like 'Britain's Got Talent' . And who are YOU to trash this person? Who on here as an FSA licence to trade? Who on here is the genuine article with the credibility to judge? I guess no one has as you would have better things to do. His comment has had a bigger impact than anything written by the judgmental , armchair wingers on here. And you complain about the state of Britain well take a look in the mirror. You are all acting like a bunch of kids - which basically what the UK has turned into anyway - who loved thinking that what he said was true (because we all knew it didn't we?) and now he is not the trader you thought he was you are all throwing your toys out the pram. As though the fact that he he doesn't have an FSA licence to trade makes what he says invalid or not credible. You are all so insecure that you need a 'real' trader , the people you despise, to say what you know ,to reassure you, to save you.. And then you can all hail the messiah. But God help him if he is not the genuine article as you would like or envision it. .

Finger and moon people , finger and moon.

Just goes to show how out of touch with things are that people immediately thought it must be a spoof whereas for others it rang more than true. And while you're here 'Yes Men' how about getting in the middle of those crazy bankers at the IMF - I couldn't believe that Lagarde the other day blatantly stated that all governments need to privatise their public services and public sector as soon as possible - since when was that decision made? That was the first time most popluations of many a country have heard that that was the policy on such a widespread basis. And nice for her to mention that yes we are in fact creating a 'lost generation' and yet stating nothing that will prevent that from happening yet everything that will probably encourage it.

Time to make people realise just what is taking place behind those closed doors of the likes of the IMF and the World Bank and how our governments have already handed over the reigns of power and policy formation to them on many different fronts.

People just don't get it or refuse to accept it - time to wake them up?

Bluecloud 29 September 2011 12:07PM
The Yes Men are heroes.

Bluecloud ? Are you like, erm. like kinda hey man, an ancient wise native american spirit guide man ?

In Bhopal The Yes Men's hoax was condemned by groups campaigning for the victims of the disaster.
"This was a cruel, cruel hoax to play on the people of Bhopal on the 20th anniversary of this tragedy," Rachna Dhingra, from the International Campaign for Justice, said.

If these are your heroes, these self-obsessed american frat boys....

~

There are loads and loads of people around - they think they're rich and successful and that they are the winners but actually they're getting fucked by the system almost as much as everyone else.

I'm torn between pity and wishing they would wake up and realise how much they have in common with people they look down on, think they're smarter than, and believe they are screwing. Either way it's incredibly depressing.

In what sense can he speak with any authority on his subject?

Next up, Jordan on Wittgenstein. Not a prank.

Or Osborne on macroeconomics? Not a prank.

One man playing the game for himself is in no way comparable to the ones at the top of the system tree, via all the relatively rich the worker bees. His personal worth isn't even worth mentioning in regards to the information. Stop being fucking ridiculous and accept he's saying it how it is. You're either stupid, or someone with a vested interest in this grubby set up to say otherwise.

People keep writing this guy's opinion off because he 'isn't a successful trader.'

But how do you know this? You have no idea how much money he may have sitting in his various trading accounts. If he is genuinely bearish on our economy, he may have vast quantities of precious metals salted away in vaults all over the world, as well as properties in other jurisdictions. Many wealthy people live in modest surroundings because they would rather deploy their capital to acquire more, rather than expending it on something they consider to be likely to be a depreciating asset (like luxury UK housing)

Is he FSA registered? No... but is Jim Rogers? Lloyd Blankfein? George Soros? I don't know... do you? As for him having no inside knowledge - do you know his employment history? His education? His reading lists? His contacts in The City?

So many Grauniad readers will believe any old bone thrown to them by the authorities....

He wasn't. Rastani is small potatoes, but he's a real trader

Perhaps technically, but then so am I.

The bloke lives in a 200 grand semi in South London with a mortgage on it. Not really in same league as Warren Buffet or George Soros.

OK it's official he isn't really a trader, al qaeda have released a statement....

An honest media would follow up by examining the nexus of merchant bankers and contempary power. Piers Morgan tweeted the question "Is that outrageous BBC trader interviewee Alessio Rastani an infamous hoaxer? Anyone know? " Of course Morgan has form on spreading financial disinformation - witness the City Slickers scandal.

goldman sachs rules the world. he's the only guy that gets it. At least he's got the balls to tell the truth.

Rastani went out of his way to be obnoxious but fundamentally all he said was that traders make big money when there are strong trends in the market. Recessions and booms are both strong trends. A flat market is what traders hate. Rastani could have chosen less repellent words but all he meant was that he prefers the market to move up or - more likely, considering the circumstances - to plummet down rather than go sideways.

We shouldn't focus on this particular individual's sociopathy, nor even on the undeniable sociopathy of traders in general. That's not the root cause. We keep moralizing when we should be analyzing. It's not greed or immorality that causes crises.

First of all, why do governments allow individuals and corporations to gamble when gambling is clearly illegal? US law enforcement arrests thousands of people every year for illegal gambling and shut downs dozens of internet gambling operations but gambling on the financial markets is perfectly OK.

Any rich bastard or bank - either individually or collectively, through funds - can bet a billion bucks oil, making an instant killing by inflecting the market with the sheer size of its bet, and affecting the real price for oil that we pay at the pump regardless of supply or demand.

A backroom crap game gets you arrested but betting against the Euro and causing a recession is perfectly legal. George Soros, who famously made his fortune by driving millions of Southeast Asians (who had never heard of hedge funds or forex trading) into destitution, is considered some sort of demigod, but we sneer at the mafia's gambling joints in Vegas although the mafia never took a penny off of anyone who wasn't game. If you don't know how to play blackjack, you're safe from its evils but if you don't know how to play the market, you are in even bigger danger than if you did.

Some economists calculate that today 90% of Western capital is "invested" in financial speculation rather than goods and services. It was the other way around 40 years ago. Some point along the way, everyone started enrolling in Harvard Business School rather than MIT because playing the numbers paid more than manufacturing. Today if you're an engineer you're a loser/nerd but if you're a wanker like Rastani all the chicks are at your feet.

So why is financial gambling not only legal but the only game in town? Why did Tony Blair - supposedly of the "Labour" Party - make financial gambling Britain's only growth industry? Why have things been allowed to degenerate to the point when it is no longer even possible to regulate the financial gamblers because their immense wealth gives them unlimited lobbying power?

It's all explained in a big book called Das Kapital. The author tells us that capitalism is built on a paradox: The source of capital is profit, which itself is obtained from the short-changing of labor. Yes, capitalists can sell to or steal from each other but no new capital can be created that way. It's only by underpaying workers that new capital is created. Underpaying workers, however, can't go on forever and it's precisely this that causes the cyclical crises of capitalism.

Underpaid workers can't consume and when the consumer market collapses, you have a crisis, like the one in 1929 and the one we have today. When the rich have robbed the poor too much and have piles of money but no consumer market left to sell to, they take to gambling amongst themselves, placing ever-wilder bets on stocks, real estate, commodities, or even tulips, until the Ponzi scheme runs dry and collapses, wiping everyone out. That's what's being called a "liquidity crisis".

Karl Marx and his successors foresaw that capitalism would take to ever-riskier speculation as it depleted its labor force. The havoc that Rastani's more heavyweight colleagues create daily in our lives with their wild and colossal gambling, with which they set off economic tsunamis, is a logical conclusion of capitalism.

The catastrophic quakes tearing apart the real economy while enriching the gamblers of the speculative economy flow logically from the basic axioms of capitalism. They are also a logical conclusion in that they will be the conclusion of this outrageous chapter of human history. Capitalism will logically conclude itself out of existence.

This guy is not a trader. He’s some sort of public speaker / attention seeker with a limited grasp banking and finance (if he really thought he could make a killing from the recession why didn’t he do so a couple of years ago??). Having an online “investment account” which anyone can set up does not a trader make. I play tennis occasionally – does that make me a professional tennis player?
The BBC clearly invited him on because he conformed to a loony left wing Gordon-Geko caricature of an evil banker. Inviting him on the BBC news show as a so-called expert on their news show is tantamount to the Daily Mail interviewing “expert” Abu Hamza for his opinion on Sharia law in UK….
I have worked on a trading floor in a major investment bank for over 10 years and have yet to meet anyone who share his "expert" views - even privately.

JustinGeoffreys
29 September 2011 12:23PM
It's not the first time the BBC have been suckered in this way:

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/article/1379/bbc-storm-as-two-of-bnps-most-notorious-activists-are-invite

I remember a Radio 4 programme about attitudes to Tony Blair in Portsmouth, in which a local SWP activist was interviewed under the guise of a "man in the street" ex-Labour supporter who had only just switched allegiance - without mentioning the fact that he had actually stood against Labour as a Socialist Alliance candidate.

Since then, I have no faith in BBC interviewees. Journalists must have their address books suffed wth numbers of extremists and nutters of all persuasion masquerading as normal members of the public.

Not to mention all the RCP-schooled "intellectuals" that crop up everywhere.

So what this Trader says is not valid then, I wonder what papers you read !

SoundMoney
"(Someone at the BBC needs to get fired over this, if they have not been already: utterly pathetic research... or complicity)."

Why? Because a glimpse of what capitalist actually think was provided? Because an interview without the layers of hypocrisy masking the true ideology driving the world was broadcast? Are you kidding?

I immediately thought it was the work of the YesMen, but I am glad it wasn't. What annoys me no end is media reporting on how the views presented in the interview are extreme, they aren't, the YesMen hit the nail on the head with this sentence:

"Rastani's point of view is actually mainstream"

This is key, if it wasn't we wouldn't see such gross inequality in terms of rights and resources everywhere around us.

As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Really!

So they wouldn't announce that it was a 'riot', and use it as an excuse to further errode our civil liberties then?

You can only change the rules if you have the power to change the rules, and we most certainly do not! The 400 on the other hand...

When the "Politcians don't run Government, Goldman Sachs do" started appearing in my Twitter timeline I noticed it but didn't follow the link. I assumed it was old because I've heard this phrase before - you know what the internet is like for 2nd winds. The more I saw it, the more I thought it was a reprisal of an old theme.Mentally I postulated that it could be connected to the USA's growing 'Occupy' movement.

Then I came to the Guardian site and Rastani was being discussed here. I asked "Who is this idiot? Is he a stooge?" It seemed to me his dialogue was provocative straw man, something for the financial community to knock down as absurdest agit-prop.

It might have been confirmation bias but something did also ring true about it. I posted a link to another article on CiF in which a programmer from an High Frequency Trading company was giving us his reified exposition on Capitalism being a natural order things, a market example of the survival of the fittest.

And there's some here that links Rastiani, and the programmer, and many other in our society. They believe this bullshit. Their are contributors to this thread expounding those very ideals. Its a bar-room anthropology, its a fantasist's charter, its a fool's paradise.

It's the highest order reflection of false-conciousness: living the nightmare that one may dream of hitting the jackpot to wallow in the shallows of luxury. But of course, all this is a lottery of hope, a failure of imagination. The subjugation of your desires to the excesses of oppression.

LibertarianLeaning

People keep writing this guy's opinion off because he 'isn't a successful trader.' But how do you know this? You have no idea how much money he may have sitting in his various trading accounts. If he is genuinely bearish on our economy, he may have vast quantities of precious metals salted away in vaults all over the world, as well as properties in other jurisdictions. Many wealthy people live in modest surroundings because they would rather deploy their capital to acquire more, rather than expending it on something they consider to be likely to be a depreciating asset (like luxury UK housing)

There's a psychological trait whereby when something confirms a belief, they reject all evidence to the contrary.

This bloke is a hoax - You and others fell for it, accept it and move on....

"But is there any alternative?

A century ago, Russia asked that same question, and the answer it came up with didn't exactly solve its problems, but created a load more."

I wonder why this 'what's the alternative' argument in defence of Capitalism as Civilisation's only hope never examples Cuba, where Castro's Experiment raised the general standard of living from Third World to First World equivalents.

For example, life expectancy at birth in 1960 was 64.2 years and in 2007, 78.3.

People keep writing this guy's opinion off because he 'isn't a successful trader.'

But how do you know this? You have no idea how much money he may have sitting in his various trading accounts. If he is genuinely bearish on our economy, he may have vast quantities of precious metals salted away in vaults all over the world, as well as properties in other jurisdictions. Many wealthy people live in modest surroundings because they would rather deploy their capital to acquire more, rather than expending it on something they consider to be likely to be a depreciating asset (like luxury UK housing)

Is he FSA registered? No... but is Jim Rogers? Lloyd Blankfein? George Soros? I don't know... do you? As for him having no inside knowledge - do you know his employment history? His education? His reading lists? His contacts in The City?

So many Grauniad readers will believe any old bone thrown to them by the authorities....

As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together

when you hear the words of (multi millionaire) socialist Michael Moore being quoted you can literally hear the noise of the barrel being scraped.

Oops, sorry, duplicate post...

Have to agree with budahh9 and whichone (great posts in my opnion) it's shocking how quickly so many of you on here just want to trash the guy instead of concentrating on the message. I worked for a stockbroker in Canary Wharf for 5 years and alot of people tend to share this kind of view.

Goldman Sachs made a ton of cash from the subprime crash the disturbing thing is they helped considerably to create the model.

The saddest thing nowadays for me is no longer does 'Knowledge is power' ring true despite all the information we are given the Wikileaks etc nothing changes the most we can do is to be shocked by it.

Anyone with Morgan's wealth and status in the way he has it , stinks of everything he pretends he doesn't align with.

A smarmy, brazen little ****. He has no authority when it comes to anything, other than deceit.
Anyone who's succumbed to him on one of his vile interview shows and laid themselves bear to his tune, is a pathetic, dribbling idiot.

When someone speaks with a bit of authority no one listens anyway, move on nothing to see, one example below:

http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/
With Kieser he even critiques the BBC's interview and adds a bit of meat to the bone. He even jokes the police won’t touch the bankers for their fraud but will happily mace peaceful protesters.

For what its worth (nothing but everything to me) my opinion is the gent on the BBC said no more then what happens, though those individuals in the square mile will present a caring sharing front which is extremely different to the actions they carry out and the outcomes of their actions, which makes it alright as long as they don’t admit it. All they will say it’s the systems fault not mine which is technically/legally (for some) correct.

They will be allowed to carry on until families in the western world can no longer put food on their table and by then its all to late.

For those who think what he is saying isn't true because he isn't a proper trader, how about he head of securities at UniCredit:

People keep writing this guy's opinion off because he 'isn't a successful trader.'

Well it's not so much that, it's more that his opinion isn't really that much more informed than what the BBC might have got had they just dragged in a man from the street at random. There are plenty of traders out there working from home on a PC in their bedrooms, many of them more successful than Rastani too.

So, how does the BBC go about finding someone like Alessio Rastani? What do they do to satisfy themselves he's qualified enough to make his opinion worth listening to?

bradfudbantam
29 September 2011 1:21PM
LibertarianLeaning

People keep writing this guy's opinion off because he 'isn't a successful trader.' But how do you know this? You have no idea how much money he may have sitting in his various trading accounts. If he is genuinely bearish on our economy, he may have vast quantities of precious metals salted away in vaults all over the world, as well as properties in other jurisdictions. Many wealthy people live in modest surroundings because they would rather deploy their capital to acquire more, rather than expending it on something they consider to be likely to be a depreciating asset (like luxury UK housing)

There's a psychological trait whereby when something confirms a belief, they reject all evidence to the contrary.

This bloke is a hoax - You and others fell for it, accept it and move on....

Thats just what you want us to do, have us move on and not recognise what is common knowledge but no-one wants to know. Vested interest spring to mind !

Sorry, didn't come out well.

How about the head of UniCredit:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/step-aside-bbc-trader-head-unicredit-securities-predicts-imminent-end-eurozone-and-global-finan

LOL, why do you people keep conflating capitalism with our present financial system?

'Capitalism' is a somewhat nebulous term, but if you mean 'free-market capitalism', and you think it is somehow responsible for our current predicament, you couldn't be more wrong.

Our current financial system is underpinned by a State-mandated money-creating cartel - the banks - who are directed by a quasi-governmental bunch of central-planners (the Bank of England) who set interest rates (which impel credit-based monetary expansion) and the monetary base.

All our current economic troubles stem from government meddling - the vast misallocation of capital caused by over-expansion of our money supply via cheap credit; government regulations directing banks and pension funds to buy sovereign debt; government borrowing to prop up unsustainable voter-pleasing wealth redistribution, you name it.

But don't let facts get in the way of your Marxist fantasies, will you?

@imlessbiasedthanyou2

That said, NOT having shares in a company you think will not be successful is significantly different from betting on a company being unsuccessful. You simply don't lose money in the first instance, where you gain money in the second.

I don't think that's the right comparison to make. The right question is: "is short-selling a stock you think will fall significantly different from buying a stock you think will rise?"

The answer to that is no. If you buy a stock you think will rise, you will only make a profit if you eventually sell it at the point when you think it's risen as high as it will go, and so will now fall. Conversely, if you short-sell a stock, you only make money by buying it once you think it will now stop falling. In both cases, you aim to buy the stock when it is under-priced, and sell it when it's over-priced. The only difference is that the order of these transactions is reversed.

just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Repeat until real.

Or what about this guy? Or this one?

They emerged from Castro's Experiment.

Can this happen again after Cuba's Education, Medical etc systems are returned to producing and maintaining a semi-enslaved population dedicated to exporting sugar and tobbaco to the profit of the World's capitalist elite?

I don't think so.

From the book 48 laws of power:

Law 11

Learn to Keep People Dependent on You

To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

Banking and bankers have applied the above 'law' and have power over everyone. Democracy is great and easy to subvert when private banks control the money.

The point is that the guy is not a trader, doesn't work in the city, and has nothing to do with it.

The fact that the BBC (and other media) have lied to their viewers in telling them that that idiot was basically the average banker is the real scandale in that story.

Everything seems to be permitted in order to portray bankers as disgusting selfish human beings.

Free market capitalism in theory would result in a optimum distribution of wealth and resources in any given society. In practice however wage dependent workers would be made to compete against $2 a day workers in China, leading to a race to the bottom, of low wages and bad working conditions. Bring back the guilds.

Looks to me like a simple case of the Beeb finally put one of CiF's regular right-wing know-it-all tossers on TV.

Even if he is a total lightweight, he was simply telling it how it is. Quite a large proportion of us new this already. The key isn't whether he is good or not. The key is this:

"we all know that Goldman Sachs bet against the same housing market they were such a big player in, and made $1bn in profit when the sub-prime crisis rendered millions of Americans homeless"

They're a bunch of sh*ts and their apologists are lickspittles of the highest order.

Everything seems to be permitted in order to portray bankers as disgusting selfish human beings.

Bankers and traders work within the system rules, they are driven to make profits obviously they are not going to worry about losers when they are so focused on profits, these are the rules of the system.

aanda
29 September 2011 1:27PM
Have to agree with budahh9 and whichone (great posts in my opnion) it's shocking how quickly so many of you on here just want to trash the guy instead of concentrating on the message. I worked for a stockbroker in Canary Wharf for 5 years and alot of people tend to share this kind of view.

Goldman Sachs made a ton of cash from the subprime crash the disturbing thing is they helped considerably to create the model.

The saddest thing nowadays for me is no longer does 'Knowledge is power' ring true despite all the information we are given the Wikileaks etc nothing changes the most we can do is to be shocked by it.

The CIA deploy the tactic of disinformation which naturally subverts the meaning of truth ! The fact that they use these methods mean that the truth will harm those, these people serve, ie., the Elite.

The Trolls apologising for the likes J.P. Morgan who are presently under investigation for fraud are seeking to muddy the waters so that the truth is obscured, what should now happen is a thorough review of all things financial and be put in state control which would make the system accountable, but the Trolls would shout this down as the last thing finance wants is accountability. Lets wait and see if J.P.Morgan is swept under the carpet like Goldman Sachs as they are too big to fail, the other irony is they can pursue their criminal activities with impunity !

There's a psychological trait whereby when something confirms a belief, they reject all evidence to the contrary.

This bloke is a hoax - You and others fell for it, accept it and move on....

It is a propagandists trait to use name calling when avoiding the issue under consideration, and seeking to move people on from those issues. I don't know if there is a psychological trait attached to that?

Perhaps you would be more comfortable trying to dismiss the views of George Soros, which while being more considered and better articulated than Rastani's interview demonstrates the abandonment of the state to markets?

LAISSEZ-FAIRE ideology shares some of the deficiencies of another spurious science, geopolitics. States have no principles, only interests, geopoliticians argue, and those interests are determined by geographic location and other fundamentals. This deterministic approach is rooted in an outdated nineteenth-century view of scientific method, and it suffers from at least two glaring defects that do not apply with the same force to the economic doctrines of laissez-faire. One is that it treats the state as the indivisible unit of analysis, just as economics treats the individual. There is something contradictory in banishing the state from the economy while at the same time enshrining it as the ultimate source of authority in international relations.

The point is that the guy is not a trader, doesn't work in the city, and has nothing to do with it.

The fact that the BBC (and other media) have lied to their viewers in telling them that that idiot was basically the average banker is the real scandale in that story.

Everything seems to be permitted in order to portray bankers as disgusting selfish human beings.

Why don't you tell us exactly who's in charge of the world, how 'the city' works and why it isn't ultimately corrupt and designed to create a few winners at the expense of the vast majority of losers.

I'm all ears sunshine.

Goldman Sachs was criticised in a Rolling Stone article when after the economic crisis hit around 2008. It was pretty explicit in condemning GS.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405

I have to agree that this is a major fail in quality control at BBC News. Anyone can register a domain name, start a blog and open a Twitter account. Almost anyone can buy and sell stocks and bonds online. The business world is full of "experts" who've done just this and, at best, read the first few chapters of "The Complete idiots Guide To..."

This guy has played the markets for 5 years and appears to have nothing to show for his "expertise" as a trader.

But it's par for the course. In the media, "experts" tend to be plausible-sounding attention seekers. Remember when Adam Woodyatt was hired to front a daily newspaper's IT column, simply because his character in Eastenders had brought a laptop? That's about the level we're talking about here. Losers from The Apprentice presenting TV shows about how to run a business - bearing in mind that the reason they were on the Apprentice was because they hadn't run a business before and had shitloads to learn, and they LOST.

Your average business correspondant knows fuck all about business, just as your average tech correspondant knows bugger all about computers and technology.

TV producers fail to recognise that in the real world we are not actors and we can't just pretend to know what we're talking about.

Not as good as the computer expert who turned out to be a cab driver. What is next

wether or not it's a hoax or 100% truth I couldn't care less. I'm just enjoying watching the media fall over itself trying to prove "he is a hoaxer" "no he isn't a hoaxer"...........i'm sure there will be a few squeaky bums in the bbc news team!

LAISSEZ-FAIRE ideology is deployed by banking interest lobbists in democracies, it is easy for money power to subvert democracies because a small interest group with money is just better at buying political power than a huge disorganized and uninformed electorate is. They can also buy universities and economists who can control the public discourse. Conversely the Keynesian economic doctrines also help money power where the state once its politicians are bought, helps to bail out and give other welfare payments to the connected.

Very strange majority of comments are going along with the character assassination with much of the media.

People still give credibility to the people who created the crisis in the first place and are now preaching to us how to fix it.

People would rather take advice from someone from Goldman Sachs, RBS or Morgan Stanley - everyone thing will be fine, all we need is another xx trillion - explain how these people have more credibility than Alessio Rastan?

We really do deserve everything coming our way... their is a silent minority who have a strong feeling that we are out of luck and know it is virtually impossible to dig ourselves out the hole of debt we have created.... however as soon as they express their opinions the ill informed and blinkered majority try to destroy them..

Most people are quite content in life not to need to amass vast amounts of wealth, and they aren't particularly jealous of the super-rich either. But now that people are seeing that this wealthy elite is flagrantly stealing our collective future prosperity, the feeling is becoming one of complete animosity.

The rich don't want to mix with us, the ordinary working people. They don't invite us into their houses nor share their transport. They don't like our schools, our healthcare or our welfare. They live in a bubble of mutual excess behind their high walls and security systems, doing their utmost to exclude us from 'their' lands - our common birthright. Even their accents are a form of elitist separation. Most of all they think their privilege is a right, that somehow they deserve their wealth and that it should be genetically preserved, even though most of them wouldn't have a clue what it means to do a days labour for an honest wage.

I say that they are caught in a miserable trap and that it is our duty to help them escape their prisons, so they can join us all in striving to do just a little bit better.

LOL, why do you people keep conflating capitalism with our present financial system?

'Capitalism' is a somewhat nebulous term, but if you mean 'free-market capitalism', and you think it is somehow responsible for our current predicament, you couldn't be more wrong.

Why do Libertarians and Austrian types remain in denial as to the true nature of capitalism?

The free market is a utopian dream just like Marx's withering away of the state. If there really were a free market, without regulation, government interference, then the strongest participants would soon begin to out-muscle the weaker. Wealth will concentrate in fewer hands. The overall (aggregrate) rate of return will diminish. The strongest participants will have such power that they could rig the market in their favour, erect barriers to entry. The "free market" has caused its own demise. It is a contradiction.

Libertarians are foolish to base their world value around such a flawed construct as "free markets"

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.
By Matt Taibbi

Renowned spoofers write article claiming BBC interview was real. 99% of Guardian readers believe them. You think it was hard to fool the BBC?

Seminal75

If there really were a free market, without regulation, government interference, then the strongest participants would soon begin to out-muscle the weaker.

Not sure if this is true. It is government interference that creates stronger participants and gives them an unfair advantage over other competitors. However a state is bound to emerge at some point, life is never static.

So CloudCastle what do you know that we don't know then? Or is it just a feeling of healthy scepticism.

Yes we allways have know the rich are Hipocrats,no doubt!
But we might get a real good look at our self,cause we allow this to happend,so did we exceded the rich in hipocrazy,i realy think so,if we let e few people,mess with our lives,or others,we got a big problem.

And @Flavia,i agry with you,about the South American way of expression or Manifestation,i have lived there,and i was there when Lula went into the scene.
This Ptista,ran over Brasil like a whirlwind,he even went so far to proclamme,that God passed over Brasil,here comes the best part,and stayed there?
Look real close on Brasil,and then say,Partido dos Trabalhadores again.

Remember this to,The Lulinho,o filhoto do Lula,who became a millionair Quickley,helped by non other than,The master of Opportunity Bank,Daniel Dantas.
I remember to,when the PF,showed the one Billion he had stazzed in a plastic sack,at his Mansion.
Remember to,when the hole case went to the ground,by a procedure error,Protogenes made a bug of Dantas phone,and in went, Mendez,king of justice,and Boomtown rats,case closed!
And here comes the underlying reality,we have been coopted by the Academics,you go look at working class(a horror words these days)partys,exs. Labour,they are floating with bright mind from the academical world,who want to do so much good for the workingclass.

This made the workers go to sleep and feel save,and now,like these things always turns out,cause academics gets older to,and then they dont surport the underclass anymore,no they eat them.
Just like the worlds biggest banks,speculating in the missery of Africa,and whroom in comes we the people with our money,and wroom in comes the bankers to steal them,do we realy need Academics,to understand that we feet the mouth that kills us,seems like it,hopes it stops very soon,or all our rich freinds has gobne to Dubai,migt be our luck,then we only need one NUKE to take them to the place they belong in,The big sleep!
Blood is red isnt it,in all of us!

Demand that the BBC has an interview with the higher echelons of Goldman Sachs and ask them how they have obtained their wealth and positioning, if you need some comfort from your money masters.
Do you think they would be cheeky enough to oblige or would they rather just stay quiet and wait for all of this current momentum be to buried by a convenient, more pressing bad news story?

Even if they did go on the BBC and said it how it really was, you'd still find an excuse to stick your fingers in your ears and be owned for the rest of your life, trying to drag everyone else down with you.

Awful people who can't be allowed to win anything.

'The people' are looking the other way. In my office, where talk tends to be exclusively about sport (on Sky, natch) or celebrities, I went to the kitchen and watched the Rastani interview on my phone. For a few seconds there was a pained silence as it played, then an abrupt resumption of the conversation that had been going on, at increased volume. We'll have to give it time, I suppose.

Wonder if he'll end up in Hansard, rather like Chris Morriss's "cake" spoof?

Whether or not this chap is a real trader isn't as interesting as the fact that so many are willing to accept that his views as stated on BBC are representative of how the majority of traders think ... the public's contempt.

Before Mr Rastani starts blowing off about how Goldman Sachs will rule the world he ought to bear in mind that during the Peasants' Revolt in England, the heads of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor both ended up stuck on spikes.

the line from people discrediting Rastani seems to be that he is a fool, but only a fool can tell the truth in such absurdity

read King Lear lol

I'm not entirely sure why people are so exercised about what he said, its hardly news is it?

Traders endeavour to make money whatever the market conditions, that's their job.
If you have the money buying at the end of a bear market just makes good financial sense - the skill is
a. spotting it is the end and
b. spotting assets that have been undervalued because of the fall and will therefore recover to their proper market value.

Add to the fact that if you can afford to stay invested a while then point a. might not be too bad either.

Hardly rocket science to understand the principles (putting it into practice on a daily basis is a different story of course).

As for shorting, the only issue I can see with this is the moral hazard argument. If I can both short and affect a share price e.g. I have credibility enough that if I start a rumour about an impending financial collapse it it believed then there is a problem. The problem though should be sorted out by tracking down the source of the defamation and jailing them for 20 years - enough high profile cases and the practice would stop fast enough.

As to the Goldman Sachs example it is trite to say the least. Any company has to hedge risk (my own is relatively small but trades internationally, accounts in sterling but bills in Euro, USD, AUD, Thai Baht etc - if we didn't hedge against Forex movements we would have gone out of business at least three times in the last couple of years and the CFO would be disbarred or in jail).

The issue with Goldman Sachs as I understand it is that they unwound their exposure to the sub-prime market by bundling toxic securities into products for certain of their clients whilst advising others to not go near them. The case to answer is a. why did they pay so little compensation (and why did so little of that go to the victims) and b. why was no one jailed for fraud?

This guy seems like a numpty. We have already been through a recession and he failed to (by all accounts) get rich off that one. Some of what he says is true, some is nonsense. The big banks have too much power and need to be put in their place. African governments are often (rightly) pilloried for how they go about their business but they know how to stop something they don't like and stop it they do.

So the governments need to grow some balls and curb the antics of the banks and hedge funds etc. and stop the average Joe from getting shafted by these greedy institutions. Enough already, control them properly and start sticking those who mess up in jail. Those pretty boy investment banker types won't like to do time in the big house where they would get to experience another side of life.

Back to the numpty, he is not smart enough to work for Goldman Sachs. He is an independent trader which means he can't get a job with one of the big boys. And it is not surprising his public speaking company is not doing very well because he is not very good at that either. Shame on you BBC, we would have expected Sky to put this numpty on tv, not you.

hoddle1

George Osborne is on a par with Rastani:

Not very bright, never done a real day's work in his short privileged life, and a right little banker.

Yet he is Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Yes Oxford University often hands out 2:1 degrees to the 'not very bright'

Some people being quite naive here, saying he doesn't know anything as he's a self employed trader.

The guy said (almost) explicity that's he's gone short. When the proverbial hits the fan, that's when he makes his money.

He knows what's he talking about (although i disagree that the $ is a safe haven; so he might get burnt with the rest of us).

Listen to him.

Yesterday the owner of my local store short changed me, so that must mean that Tesco's are crooks too?

What I love about CIF is the reassurance that there are some stupid people out there who probably sleep in tin-foil hats.

"As Michael Moore pointed out "

I can't take any article seriously which includes this line.

lightacandle

Listen to what the man says:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c6d_1QUfC4

How much are they?

And check out his YouTube profile.

Interesting interests, no?

OOps, too fast
http://www.youtube.com/user/alessiorastani?blend=21&ob=5

@seminal75

LOL, why do you people keep conflating capitalism with our present financial system?

'Capitalism' is a somewhat nebulous term, but if you mean 'free-market capitalism', and you think it is somehow responsible for our current predicament, you couldn't be more wrong.

Why do Libertarians and Austrian types remain in denial as to the true nature of capitalism?

The free market is a utopian dream just like Marx's withering away of the state. If there really were a free market, without regulation, government interference, then the strongest participants would soon begin to out-muscle the weaker. Wealth will concentrate in fewer hands. The overall (aggregrate) rate of return will diminish. The strongest participants will have such power that they could rig the market in their favour, erect barriers to entry. The "free market" has caused its own demise. It is a contradiction.

Libertarians are foolish to base their world value around such a flawed construct as "free markets"

I see you completely ignored the rest of my post pointing out how our financial system's imbalances are entirely due to government intervention, which has prevented anything like the corrections that would have happened in a free-market monetary system.

"the strongest participants would soon begin to out-muscle the weaker. Wealth will concentrate in fewer hands" - no, this is what happens when the strongest end up hijacking government apparatus through regulatory capture, lobbying, and outright bribery - a situation which arises because the size, power, and all-pervasiveness of the State mean such hijacking becomes worthwhile.

In states where you have 100% government - communist/socialist dictatorships - the strongest wind up having EVERYTHING, because they are backed by the coercive power of the state.

We need a state to protect us against predators, but when the state grows beyond a certain size it becomes the predator. We are long past that point.

I didn't find what he said that shocking, though he did express it bluntly. You can read more or less the same anyday on CIF below the line. I find the situation he described to be pretty shocking though.

I was also puzzled that the BBC acted so shocked. Have all those presenters and newspeople really never heard this viewpoint represented before? Do they not actually know in what contempt the general populace - left and right wing, in my experience - hold the financial institutions and financiers? Have they seriously never been told that Greece is going to default and all these plans and bailouts are just closing the stable door after the horse has bolted? They must be living in some kind of bubble if they've never heard these opinions expressed. It's not as if you need to burrow your way into some conspiracy site on the internet. You can read it in the Guardian, hear it on Al-Jazeera, and I've ever read things more or less saying what he said in the Telegraph and the Economist, recently.

It's only the BBC that persists with this 'mustn't frighten the horses' insanity. I can't keep watching them drivel on about 'the risk' of another recession, or 'the risk' of greek default when any sane human being knows that we are well into the double dip and that the best thing we are going to get out of Greece is an orderly, as opposed to a disorderly default.

For God's sake, there was somebody on newsnight the other day saying that the financial crisis was the fault of too much democracy, becuase politicians couldn't act decisively because of their electorates, and the presenter was nodding along. Too much democracy! Did anyone out there vote for this? No, of course they didn't.

BBC news are a rump of a once-decent organisation. If you turn on AJ English, you will suddenly notoce where all the decent BBC journalists went.

JessicaReed
29 September 2011 11:12AM
For those who want to learn more about the Yes Men's most famous prank. I think this is a genius idea, myself...

if you think this is such a "genius idea" why don't you just invent quotes from imaginary corporate spokespeople yourself and insert them into articles in the Guardian?

You're in exactly the right place to do it.

buddha9

The desperation of people to discredit this bloke and smear the man not the info is hardly surprising --its standard right wing stuff

I completely agree. Traders make (and lose) their money from falling as well as rising markets....

The market is all but dead along with the people who serve it. The only thing we see are death throes, denials, and the kicking and screaming that goes with taking a toy off of a spoiled child.

People are never going to trust the machine again especially as the blame game fails to stick mud on anyone other than the banks, accountants, traders, speculators and corporeate interests. We now know that size is everything in the corporate game playing and so we simply pare them all down. This will also mean that "gambling" on the market will not be quite so full of "bankers" and more full of a word that rhymes, and if you can lose the lot just like that then may be the cocky dealers will be sick rather than slick.

So carry on kidding us you are going to patch it all up and play it all over again. There are no patches big enough.

hoddle1

29 September 2011 11:01AM

George Osborne is on a par with Rastani:

Not very bright, never done a real day's work in his short privileged life, and a right little banker.

Yet he is Chancellor of the Exchequer.

now, now George has had work experience...

"Osborne's first job was entering the names of people who had died in London into a National Health Service computer. He also briefly worked for Selfridges, re-folding towels."

teaboy wrote
The guy said (almost) explicity that's he's gone short. When the proverbial hits the fan, that's when he makes his money

Have you shorted the market yourself, or are you more the virgin who reads the Kama Sutra?

To recap:

Presently, banks make their enormous profits not because they trade within a free-market regime, but because they are granted cartel privileges - by the state - that enable them to literally create money from nothing via fractional reserve lending. It is as if a select group of people were permitted by law to counterfeit currency, but only for the purposes of lending, and then collecting a percentage (ie, interest) for their 'efforts'. It's hardly surprising they wind up making disproportionate profits, while inflating the prices of assets bought on credit.

Further, the whole premise that 'capitalism is in crisis' necessarily conflates capitalism with our current financial system. Capitalism is fine, and thriving in developing countries. What we have is a crisis in our monetary system. I find most mainstream commentary on this subject surprisingly confused, with even our most celebrated pundits failing to comprehend that there is a profound difference between a free market monetary system, and one that employs a collection of central-planners to decide interest rates, the size of the monetary base, and what constitutes Tier1 capital... which is what we have at present.

I work in the City. There are plenty of people around here who know full well that you can make plenty money out of a falling market, and plenty money out of other people's misery. That's the system.

Love it, live with it, or change it.

Teadrinking:

"The only difference is that the order of these transactions is reversed."

No. The largest difference is that you are betting on an organisation to fail, rather than succeed.

Concentrating on the mechanics of it doens't make the morality go away.

Ultimately all you are saying is that there is similarity in the fact that the end goal is to make money. Which is where I would agree with you,being blatantly obvious.

BarkingMad wrote

now, now George has had work experience... "Osborne's first job was entering the names of people who had died in London into a National Health Service computer. He also briefly worked for Selfridges, re-folding towels."

People from a privileged background can't win on that score. If they get a "posh" job, they've no experience of a real job. If they get a menial job they're classed as thick.

"Everything seems to be permitted in order to portray bankers as disgusting selfish human beings." (SurvivalMachine)

Yes, and most shockingly, even the use of their own words and deeds.

@ Msay

I work in the City. There are plenty of people around here who know full well that you can make plenty money out of a falling market, and plenty money out of other people's misery. That's the system

And as markets usually fall a lot faster (*crash*) than they rise, you can no doubt make money faster in that case as well.

It was too good to be true, but now the truth is much better than any recent comedy.

A real trader as a Yes Men fake - priceless !!

The issue with Goldman Sachs as I understand it is...

Then your understanding is partial. A consideration which included Lawrence Summers, Thomas E. Donilon, and other US government advisers, (and their links and conflicts of interests with the likes of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase), along with their input into policy decisions, such as enabling the Financial Accounting Standards Board to weaken “mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of their toxic assets might help broaden your understanding?

So this Rastani guy isn't a real trader? This isn't another case in which a random taxi driver has been standing around in the BBC's lobby, and some producer has mistaken him for someone significant, and they've gone ahead and interviewed him by mistake, is it?

There's no immorality in shorting a share or currency. All you're doing is placing a bet - against a willing buyer - that a company or currency is over-valued. If you're correct, you make money; if you're wrong, you lose money. Simples. It is no more immoral than betting that a company is under-valued, and buying a share in anticipation of its price rising.

Naked-shorting... now there's another thing. When you short a share, you have to borrow it; it has to exist. When you naked-short, you are not only selling something you don't have, but, possibly more of something than actually exists.

This, incidentally, is how precious metals prices are suppressed - there are multiple paper owners for every actual physical ounce of gold and silver. But that's another topic...

What happened to the days where we tried to hide out absolute vileness and reason for contempt.
Not invite it as in this case.

I think the real injustice here is that it's really hard for retail investors to short the market

:D

Seriously though, this guy is just some random who, based on the clip, knows barely more than your average person on the street. Those who declare he's speaking "the truth", so what? Lots of people are bearish about the future, and many of them are much more qualified to speak about it. Just because he speaks to lots of stereotypical Guardianista ideas about finance doesn't make this any more than an embarrassment for the BBC

Also it's silly to say banks/traders make money from falling markets. Some do, some don't and in my opinion it's easier to ride a market up than a market down.

Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.

With credentials coming out of their ear's, years of experience and positive bank balances those 'experts' of the 'predictive science' of economics couldn't see the catastrophe coming even as it was biting them on the arse. After three years and trillions of monies later things only get worse, yet those same credential drenched 'experts' are wheeled out to bark for even more of the same.

Not sure credentials are all they're cracked up to be.

Pretty bog standard selective character assassination and no hope counter points being made with a smatter of 'I once met/I once was a trader' thrown in..... It's your lack of imagination darling....!

He was just some prick stating the bleedin' obvious, get over it.

"Shades of the "dead peasant" bets of Goldman Sachs finest."

A dire world we live in. Disaster capitalism is the perfect expression of the 'zeitgeist' created and sustained by the leaders of the most ferally capitalist Western countries, at the behest of their corporate puppet-masters. Meanwhile, Miliband maunders on about the fecklessness of the unemployed. Surely, they should be prepared to work at the Big House, when that day arrives.... (in their dreams).

With their 'tip of the hat' to Thatcher over some policies of hers, however, minuscule their significance, - even assuming they were not atrocious, a big 'if' - her NuLab(c) 'after-births' are clearly trying to establish in their own minds that they actually weren't completely without the least vestige of integrity, that there is some continuity in their political stance.

That, Edward, is all too obvious, at this end of the decades of right-wing maladminisitration of the country's affairs. We know your right-wing credentials, and just wish that you'd stop trying to justify them, even just a weeny bit. It's the promise of change in the direction of a Socialist administration, always more competent in its running of he economy, that's mistrusted by the rest of us

Slipping in that bit about "some of Thatcher's policies", reminds me of the plaintive response of former Celtic striker, Frank McAvennie, when a police officer found several pounds of cocaine in the boot of his car: "It's just a wee bit of charlie, officer..."

In court, he told the judge the money was to be used to salvage treasure from a sunken galleon.. He got off. How could you imprison a character like that? Don't expect the same 'free ride' from the electorate, if you keep peddling reminders of that woman, Edward.

So anyone can declare themselves a representative of any group and the entire group should then be judged on that persons opinion?

Few people are naive enough to think that. Rather I think it's a case of people simply choosing to believe whatever they want to believe. Us humans are a vindictive lot, always looking for someone (most importantly, someone else) to blame and throw into the Volcano as responsible for life's imperfections and adversities.

LibertarianLeaning -

I disagree. Betting on an organisation failing is immoral. Particularly when markets can be manipulated and eaffect the success of the organisaiton by people betting against it.

We aren't talking about football results here, thids is people's lives.

The desperation of people to discredit this bloke and smear the man not the info is hardly surprising --its standard right wing stuff

qft

Peter Bracken anyone?

Shouldn't this massive arsehole be punished in some way? For example the words "Massive Arsehole" or "I love recessions" could be tatooed, or pehaps branded or carved, on his forehead. Or his job could be taken away and his bank account could be emptied without warning one day. Perhaps just as he approaches the check-out in a supermarket. "I'm sorry sir but your card has been rejected, you've just been sacked and I am now required by law to carve the words "Massive Arsehole" into your forehead."

"They've never had it so good and we've never been as cowed, cowardly or just plain stupid!" Up till now, they were prepared to buy "us" off, with a few well placed crumbs. That's about to change - the drive now is to destroy all welfare states wherever they exist, and squeeze wages till western workers are as badly off as those in the developing world. Why now? Because they can. They got through the crash, and ended up even richer, so why should they fear a backlash they know won't be coming. Not, at least, till they so destroy the living standards of the majority that even the career journalists are prepared to attack the status quo rather than back it.

@marado

Peter Bracken anyone?

I thought he only turns up to defend Tony Blair.