So THAT's why the banks and Wall Street can never be publicly "arrested"

[dixiegrrrrl]

Michael Lewis's book Flash Boys is jam packed with revelations about Wall Street.
One of the revelations is this:
the entire Wall Street system reflects the imaginary numbers created by the super fast computer trading, which has been around for years now. In other words, not on real life value.

The traders, for the most part, only know how to use/react to what the computer programs tell them. Much like the blind men and the elephant analogy, they only see the parts of the system they work in.

The computers gallop along their own, actually. Those programs have been created, edited, added onto, so many times that any changes in the code at this point threaten to collapse the system.

and here is the heart stopper:
This model is GLOBAL.
Lewis states that Wall Street "exported" the entire system to global markets by now, so that they all can work on the same information and mechanisms.

think about that for a minute.
Think about how you would unwind a global financial market.
The market that pensions and paychecks and all banking services are based on, across the world.

BIG tiger by the tail indeed.

[2naSalit]

1. The only way to change this

is to stop participating in "the system". I know it's really hard to do since we have been lulled into trusting this system and allowing ourselves to believe that "convenience" is the way to go... but it obviously is not to those of us who woke up some time ago. Money is not your friend unless you have enough of it to help yourself and others prepare to walk away from the system. It will be a big ugly-demon-nightmare-from-hell when it all starts crashing down, when enough of the regular unmonied people stop participating because they realize they can't break even working in/with the current economic system that is rigged against them. But it will happen, hopefully before we completely destroy the biosphere.

[Mira]

2. Thank you for this post and the alert

to this terrifying scenario.
I suspect I need to try to stomach reading the book.

[rrneck]

3. Book recommendation...

http://www.amazon.com/Voltaires-Bastards-Dictatorship-Reason-West/dp/0679748199
Known for his novels of international intrigue, Saul in his first work of nonfiction delivers a passionate jeremiad on the follies of our age. Reason, he argues, has run amok; instead of the enlightened utopia envisaged by Voltaire, the modern West is a soulless machine run by technocratic elites that promise efficiency but create disasters. The author targets the insane waste of our "permanent war economy," the perils of nuclear power, the co-optation of democracy by vested interests, the news media's focus on false events and manufactured celebrities, the "personality politics" of presidential campaigns. He critiques the Harvard Business School's management teachings, profiles such figures as Thomas Jefferson, Robert McNamara and Charles de Gaulle, flunks our colleges for failure to reward creativity and imagination.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Making note of that book, thanks.

I vacillate between despair and denial, as I think most of us do, but I know also that "the center cannot hold".

[Electric Monk]

6. I'd also recommend The Big Short and Liar's Poker, also by Michael Lewis

http://books.google.com/books?id=eParwQ0YdrcC

http://books.google.com/books?id=5NfZvS8gCeQC

[yallerdawg]

4. Elizabeth Warren...

just mentioned the "too big to fail" entities are now 38% bigger than in 2008.

"Flash Boys" illustrates how this system is so rigged and manipulated, billions are being siphoned off to the 'financiers' and the average investor will never have access to that wealth or opportunity.

Regulation is over, the SEC doesn't even understand how this works - until they leave and go to work for them!