Oh great, yet another "financial instrument" that is likely to fuck us over: https://www.collapse2050.com/a-hidden-risk-that-could-trigger-financial-collapse/
I guess nobody learns much from history in finance...
Header picture is from the LX Factory in Lisbon :)
1/ #MAGA bros are crowing about the 2nd highest single day Nasdaq stock market gains in history. It's worth remembering that:
1. the 1st, 4th, 7th, 8th, and 10th largest single day Nasdaq gains came during the dotcom crash.
2. the 3rd and 5th largest single day gains came in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis.
3. the 6th and 8th (tied) largest gains came during the covid panic in 2020
In other words all 10 of the highest gaining days in Nasdaq history, with the possible exception of today which is still TBD, came during major long term market crashes.
Massive market moves like this are in no way a sign that markets are healthy and performing their societal function. In fact quite the opposite - massive moves up are historically almost always a symptom of the disease of speculative mania refusing to accept reality (“buy the dip!!!!”).
#uspol #recession #stockmarket #finance #trump #tariff #tariffs #QQQ #Nasdaq #GreatFinancialCrisis #GFC #buythedip #BTFD #economy #economics
a bro from the largest american crypto VC firm #a16z is going to be running the #CFTC which in turn will be the agency "regulating" crypto now that the #SEC (also now run by crypto bros) has decided cryptocurrency is not a "security" (like a share of stock or a bond) but instead a "commodity" (like corn or pork bellies). which makes sense, as long as you don't think about it.
fun fact: the CFTC was the agency that regulated (and still regulates) financial derivatives and is more or less directly responsible for 2008's Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession.
#MarcAndreessen #BenHorowitz #MAGA #VCs #NerdReich #uspol #GreatFinancialCrisis #GreatRecession #DOGE #Trump #BrianQuintenz #corruption #fraud #finreg #stockmarket #economics #finance
Crooked auditors were at the center of the #GreatFinancialCrisis, too:
https://francinemckenna.com/2009/12/07/they-werent-there-auditors-and-the-financial-crisis/
And of course, crooked auditors were behind the #Enron fraud, a rare instance in which a fraud triggered a serious attempt to prevent future crimes, including the destruction of accounting giant #ArthurAndersen. After Enron, Congress passed #SarbanesOxley (#SOX), which created a new oversight board called the #PublicCompanyAccountingOversightBoard (#PCAOB).
15/
But the crash of 2008 made it clear that the largest insurance companies in the world were capable of the same wishful thinking, motivated reasoning, and short-termism that they were supposed to prevent in every other business. Without AIG - one of the largest insurers in the world - there would have been no #GreatFinancialCrisis. The company knowingly underwrote hundreds of billions of dollars in junk bonds dressed up as AAA debt, and required a $180b bailout.
7/
But all that changed in 2008, when the world's central banks addressed the #GreatFinancialCrisis by bailing out not just the *banks*, but the *bankers*, funneling trillions to the people whose reckless behavior brought the world to the brink of economic ruin.
Suddenly, these wealthy people, and their banks, experienced enormous wealth-gains *without* profits.
7/
Perhaps you recall predatory inclusion from the #GreatFinancialCrisis, when predatory #SubprimeMortgages with deceptive teaser rates were foisted on Black homeowners (who were eligible for better mortgages), resulting in a wave of Black home theft in the #foreclosure crisis:
https://prospect.org/justice/staggering-loss-black-wealth-due-subprime-scandal-continues-unabated/
Before these loans blew up, they were styled as a means of creating Black intergenerational wealth through housing speculation.
2/
"Really smart" isn't the same as "infallible" and really smart people can be spooked or bulled into doing the wrong thing - like #Obama "foaming the runways" for the banks with the houses of mortgage holders, and leaving the bankers responsible for the #GreatFinancialCrisis unscathed:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout
8/
When Geithner told Obama he had to "#FoamTheRunway" for the crashing banks with the roofs over everyday Americans' heads, there were no grassroots organizers foaming at the mouth in outrage. Thus did Obama end the #GreatFinancialCrisis - by creating the Great #ForeclosureCrisis:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly
10/
Obama's tolerance of bank sleze after the #GreatFinancialCrisis kicked off the modern era of corporations and grifters stealing Americans' out from under them, forging deeds in #robosigning mills:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-breaks-down-93-bln-robo-signing-settlement-2013-02-28
5/
Chewie
⚯ Michel de Cryptadamus ⚯
Cory Doctorow
