MICHEL PIREU: Rigged stock markets load dice in favour of insiders who coin it
Take a speculative cocktail shaker. Add four parts public ignorance and 33 parts greed. Toss in a little perceived genius. If you don’t have any freshly ground perceived genius to hand, a little dried genius status will do. Season generously with mystique. Add apparent publicity shyness to taste. Serve in opaque tumbler of awes, ill-informed media coverage." — Martin Baker. A con is an intentional deception to cause a person to give up property or some lawful right. Con games are crimes of persuasion and deception. The victim always trusts the swindler in some way. Does this definition of a con fit the stock market? Is the stock market a con? It would be hard to deny that causing a loss to those who rely on it to provide a fair trade in the ever-increasing number of products and services it offers is all too often what the market ends up doing due to various deceits, and always has done, whatever its intention.As the Huffington Post highlights in tracing the history of the US market...
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