>> ^EMPIRE:
oh... so the crash is an opportunity for assholes like this to make a buck.


What he says is that anyone can make money during a crash; and this is true. The problem is that when markets plummet, people see no end in sight. So they panic sell and then turn paper losses into real losses and further precipitate the downturn. I've seen it happen so many times it boggles my mind.

I think Warren Buffet said it best: people will buy anything on sale except for stocks.

A lot of people on YouTube saying he's a fake by the Yes Men, but he's real:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2011/sep/27/european-debt-crisis-live#block-10

>> ^SpaceOddity:

If you people would get off your reactionary, self-righteous high horses for a second you would realize he is one of the good guys, relatively speaking... Don't hate the Player. Hate the game.


He's just a fairly smart guy who got a very well paid job as one of the camp guards.

"You can be a guard too", he says! "No need to be slave labour, if you're fairly smart you can sell out your brothers and sisters and ride around in a quarter million dollar car and own 10 houses the slaves will have to rent and pay off for you!
Come on guys, what's wrong with you?! I'm trying to help you!"

Soemthing sensible needs to be done quick before the human race defaults to the same solution it has used EVERY TIME this has happened before, i.e. the fall of EVERY EMPIRE till now, and these 'good guys' end up on the guillotine.

I pretty much agree with @SpaceOddity; I think it is easy to misinterpret this guy's candor and his phrasing from his perspective as a trader, causing him to appear like a dude cleaning his monocle, waxing his mustache, and evilly laughing as he stomps on Joe Sixpack.

Basically, here's what I took away from his statement instead:
The market moves in short-term cycles on top of long-term cycles. Sometimes you can make a lot of money by shuffling around paper; stocks, foreign currencies, etc. Sometimes that stuff crashes and you will need to concentrate on more real, physical assets to stay ahead of the game; gold, major commodities, land, etc.

He thinks that Europe is approaching that 2nd sort of situation in their long-term cycle. So, his advice is to first nail down your ownership of any physical assets that you have. Your house, land, and other physical property. If/when the crash hits, physical assets can be traded to accumulate more tradable assets in the same way a trader would normally do with stocks and other less tangible assets.


...Either that, or he is just trying to incite some momentary fluctuations in the market that he is in a position to take advantage of. But honestly, I didn't get that read from listening to him.

Your video, Trader on BBC News says Eurozone Market will crash, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Exactly. He's shorting the market and hoping to influence it through this. He's getting good bang for his buck due to the virality of this video too.

Still, when the stock market crashes - I think ooohh, Wallstreet is having a clearance sale! Warren Buffet's axiom holds true: Be afraid when people are greedy. Be greedy when people are afraid.

(not that I have a single red cent directly invested in the stock market, just saying)

>> ^EMPIRE:

oh... so the crash is an opportunity for assholes like this to make a buck. He actually said he dreams of another recession. WHAT a HUGE fucking piece of shit. It's horrible people like this asshole who created this mess.

>> ^petpeeved:

This just makes me think we need a Hippocratic oath for people in the financial sector.
"Do no harm" not "make money at any cost."


Oaths don't hold people accountable. Regulation does. Except when it doesn't. Which is often.

You're right though, the single biggest factor in the unsustainability of modern economies is the practice of "profit maximization." It is short-term gain mentality that leads to the game of economic hot potato known as the boom-bust cycle. Shareholders are primarily responsible for this.

If you people would get off your reactionary, self-righteous high horses for a second you would realize he is one of the good guys, relatively speaking. A bit dramatic perhaps, sure.

The subtle, if somewhat awkward manner in which he phrased his position is where you're getting hung up, methinks.

"Personally? It doesn't matter - I'm a trader. I don't really care about that kind of stuff. If I see an opportunity to make money, I go with that."

"Personally?" - Perhaps better read as "Honestly?" instead. He's leading with a qualifier because he knows what he says next is not likely to be corroborated by his peers in the mainstream press- precisely because it would generate the type of reaction seen in this very thread. Where others would "massage" their message to make the profession seem more noble, he doesn't. Its honestly quite baffling to me that there's even a perception problem stemming from the relevant parties acting in their own self-interest. (As an aside, I'm quite aware of the rampant corruption that occurs - indeed, often when that very spirit of self-interest collapses into blind greed. My statements only consider those who are above board.)

Also, don't interpret "Personally?" in a literal sense that he "truly doesn't care about that kind of stuff" in his own, personal moral fiber. In order to illustrate his point, he's speaking from the point of view of "every trader." That certainly includes him, but doesn't speak to his individual conscience. "Not caring" whether the market rebounds doesn't mean he feels no sorrow for those who've lost everything, he means it has no bearing on his bottom line because every trader with a functioning brain hedges their bets. Present company seems to find that idea morally repugnant, but to not do it would outright crazy. In addition, there's no moral implication anyway - the market's gonna do what it does whether there's systemic hedging or not.

I could break down the rest about how you should all calm down over the "dreaming of another recession" comment or the fact traders literally couldn't be the ones to fix things if they tried, but I think y'all get the idea.
He then goes on to give people what sounds to me like sound advice in taking advantage of a down market, and goes so far as to suggest that Goldman Sachs has more influence over the world economy than the governments themselves - which is, of course, completely true. (BTW, I'll take 2:1 that he's found dead from auto-erotic asphyxiation by Halloween.)

tl;dr version: Don't hate the Player. Hate the game.

Um... wow. Damn, that was pretty frank.

So, it's all about making money then? Okay, right, glad we sorted that out.

"I'm a trader. I don't really care about that kind of stuff. If I see an opportunity to make money, I go with that."

>> ^EMPIRE:

oh... so the crash is an opportunity for assholes like this to make a buck. He actually said he dreams of another recession. WHAT a HUGE fucking piece of shit. It's horrible people like this asshole who created this mess.


Yes this guy should have a bullet in his brain in a back alley but life isn't fair.

Emphasising that he's a trader didn't really help his attempt to trade on his appearance.

Not sure why the BBC would ask a trader for their opinion of the market in the first place; it will always be self serving bullshit (whether he's right or not).

>> ^kulpims:

promote. he might as well be on coke but at least he's honest about the financial situtation in eu right now


or creating panic to profit.

Cheers for the promote

In reply to this comment by kulpims:
*promote. he might as well be on coke but at least he's honest about the financial situtation in eu right now

@hpqp "ethnic Jews are Arabs"

Genetic studies find the majority of European Jews' ancestry is European. A small number of male Jewish traders settled in Europe in the middle ages or Roman times and took European wives.

Also, European Jews experienced an interesting divergent evolutionary environment during their time separated from the progenitor population, so even if they weren't a mix of European & Middle Eastern ancestry, they'd be their own unique population.

I mean I don't really give a shit about bookstores or video stores. I watch most film off of StageVu, so I'm a damn hypocrite. But, if I do get the courage to go into the local video store they have an immense amount of film and it's run by a guy who played in that legendary band Jawbreaker. It's always an amazing time browsing their art film, criterion collection and horrid hard-to-find 80's films. I think I've gone into City Lights once or twice. Seen it, been there, done that. I think I bought an Arthur Rimbaud book from the Beat section, haha. And that is pretty much the only book I will ever need again.

I definitely try to buy local, it's much more difficult in smaller towns where the chains already have a chain around the local economies necks. I try to buy from small local grocers, farmer's markets or the co-op. I like the idea of the co-op but truthfully they are really much more expensive. But their workers get huge bonuses at the end of the year $30k+ and they don't have asshole managers). Sometimes I mess up and end up going into Trader Joe's (TWO BUCK CHUCK!!!) but I definitely won't support Safeway and all of their shit biotech-foods.

I definitely think changing America's mind on where they buy their goods from would have an immense impact on the country for the better. The less oil on your food the better. Starting a co-op is a great way to take power back locally and empower local farmers - though, like I said the consumer ends up paying a bit more for food (albeit, really good food).

The LA/SF-based creative collective Fog and Smog reps the beacon of Venice gentrification at Lincoln and Rose, where producer-types with their fake-tans drive their Priuses to get kombucha and their daily bread. But if "getting real" is what you do in the Venice Whole Foods, what do you call what happens at the Santa Monica Trader Joes?