Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Today's Top News
Sorry, But This Trader's Banking Confession Was No Prank
The Yes Men have been blamed for Alessio Rastani's comments on the financial crisis. But sometimes truth outdoes satire
This week, an insignificant market trader and self-proclaimed financial self-help guru, Alessio Rastani, rocketed to stardom after speaking frankly on the BBC about the collapsing market and his plans to make money from it. We Yes Men heard about it right away, because soon after the broadcast, people started emailing from all over the world to congratulate us on another prank well done. They couldn't imagine that a real trader could possibly speak so candidly about the market, so they assumed Rastani was one of our posturings.
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.
Well, duh. Don't 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? John Paulson, the manager whose hedge fund was betting for Goldman, could have honestly said exactly what Rastani said, but of course he knew better – possibly because unlike Rastani, Paulson's firm had a major, immediate and provable impact, and there's no telling how his millions of victims might have reacted. Unlike Rastani, true industry insiders like Paulson, Geithner et al remain silent about the way their system works, couching it all in technical jargon and full-on deceit. They've been doing it for decades, and, since Ronald Reagan's day, with increasing consistency.
Lately, it hasn't been working so well. Something has been speaking in very plain language to millions of people. The crowds amassing in cities from New York to Athens to Paris are just the tip of the iceberg, just the most visible of all those who have long known, viscerally, that Rastani's point of view is actually mainstream. Those people also know that, armed with truth and awareness, anything is possible.
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.
11 Comments so far
Show AllWhen reality is 'stranger' than fiction, the old curse of 'May you live in interesting times,' has come to pass. It would not be surprising in the least that the fellow members of Alessio Rastani investment class are cursing him, as his three minutes of honesty on the BBC just increased the propaganda budget they will have to pony up...and it is quite likely that it will not be as effective because his statements are out in the public space.
Make him an honorary 'Yes Men' man for having blown off the cover so well!
when political leaders can commit crimes against humanity with impunity, knowing full well there will never be any legal repercussions - when those in the financial sector can so brazenly rip off millions of people and receive huge bonuses and cabinet level appointments - in this age, it seems, why not tell the truth? no effort wasted on cover-ups, accountability, etc.
KPFA's Flashpoints' Dennis Bernstein interviewed a young protestor who worked as a trader for a hedge fund. Is it only the young who recognize that the game is rigged and needs to be ended?
The latest from Max Keiser, including a very good interview with Nomi Prins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtjbZl6ZwkQ&feature=player_embedded#!
"Don't 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?"
Goldman Sachs has a major advantage over Rastani when it comes to betting on downturns: certainty in the timing. They both can see the downturn coming, but Goldman Sachs is actually big enough to MAKE the downturn come when it wants it to. That's the real secret to GS success, because especially when you're shorting a market, timing is everything.
Don't forgt Goldman runs the software that runs the market and so is able to front trade the market.
Like the old song goes - Money for nothing i want my HFT
HFT = " High-Frequency Trading "
Yes, of course the algorithmic trading that accentuates first creating bubble markets to later pop and harvest.
Essentially a long-term set of constraints mapped on top of dynamically reacting to short-term things, that happen many times every second ( over years ) -- e.x.c.e.p.t when they don't any longer REACT, but actually manipulatively CREATE huge ( pump & dump ) deviations.
Supposedly honest and only remotely plausible legal trades, whose block trading patterns, then drive people ( actually other autonomous machines ) to react as desired, to maximize the positions of " He with the Golden Sacks, makes the Rules, " demonstrating an unremitting egregious rapacity and unmitigated heinous lack of empathy for their causing the unnecessary suffering and deaths of billions of victims
H __ o r r e n d o u s
F __ ⊃ © k i n g
T __ r a i t o r s
Goldman Sachs and their agents are blood covered mass murdering psychopaths, acting as business men, with CEO Lloyd Blankstein heretically saying that he's 'devoted' to doing
" God's work."
Like much of today's propaganda that deceptively :
⇒ reverses lies into apparent truths,
⇐ truths into apparent lies,
⇒ apparent freedom into slavery,
⇐ slavery into apparent freedom
… now we have clearly evil, unscrupulous, and wicked devious usurpatious deeds ( working toward the opposite of God, and the common good ), being deceitfully attributed to BEING of the highest of ANY possible motives.
Talk about the "Church of Deceit" and mammon's villainous taint and evil influence, Blankstein attempts to make virtuous, one of the deadliest of SINS ?
Now that's really a powerful example of ( what's wrong in this world ) :
G R E E D _ a t _ a n y _ C O S T
( taken to the ultimate extremity of corruption, of our very immoral souls )
Yes, I think this is a price that we can ill afford, immeasurably beyond mere diamonds and gold, and ineffably beyond mere evil deeds.
How can anyone even remotely human
find pleasure in sending people
to their suffering and deaths ?
- ☠- Because being a psychopath,
- ☠- is only apparently being human !
P S Y C H O P A T H Y _ i s _ R E A L L Y _ C O S T I N G _ U S
For more, see "A Billionaires' Coup in the US"
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/23-6
At : Sep 23 2011 - 2:57pm _&_ Sep 27 2011 - 5:52pm
See Dr Hare's ( "Snakes in Suits," ) Psychopathy Checklist, at http://bit.ly/5PQLlS
… and also on "Rome Wasn't Burned In A Day"
At http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/21
At : Sep 23 2011 - 4:46pm
Dr Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology book is available for FREE downloading ( as a PDF ), here : http://bit.ly/poGiHx __ and more can be learned at __ PONEROLOGY.COM
This dude does not look at all like Bichlbaum, although when I think of the Yes Men, I think of him in a penis suit.
I simple LOVE it.
When true LIFE itself, is more insightfully emergent -- than the purposeful ART of " The Yes Men," who so cleverly parody our reality, by their "posturing" accentuating the powerfully IRONIC -- in synthesizing and exaggerating the otherwise gravely buried humor that surrounds us, mostly unbeknownst to us seriously driven to survive.
L I F E _ i m i t a t i n g _ A R T _,
as it were, when regular folks
mistakenly attribute things, like :
__" They couldn't imagine that a real trader could possibly speak so candidly about the market, so they assumed Rastani was one of our posturings.
Trader Alessio Rastani shocked BBC viewers when said he ‘dreams of another recession'.
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. "__
-- -- --
I'm reminded of a professor, whose subtle assignment was for us to consider what WONDER was for us.
Of course, it's about our somehow returning to those child-like days of being open to any and everything, w/o judgement nor concern for fitting it into some overall theory of everything that we later call "our life."
Life is funning about that, repeating our lessons until we either get them, or give up on getting them.
I wonder why ?
"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." Can Someone explain to me how is that possible because without a revolution as it happened in middle east, I do not see how we ca ntake back our country. take a look at what 's going on in NY. NYPD uses force and brutality against peaceful protesters and those protesters cannot do anything against it. Those crap police officers won't be fired or investigated. this is a new kind of fascism. so please explain to me how the rest of us changes things as we are powerless. at one point if this brutality goes on and spreads out through the country, we will have to protect ourselves by any means..