Episodit
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It’s 2.42 PM on May 6 2010. Navinder Sarao, a thirty-two year old British Indian and self-taught trader, plunges Wall Street into chaos. In just a few minutes, 750 billion euros disappear from the financial markets. All screens go black. It’s the stop logic function, put in place to avoid prices from crashing. After five long seconds, the orders slowly start up again, and the money reappears as well. But Sarao was able to take advantage of what will become known as the “flash crash”, and for a few moments human ingenuity managed to trump the domination of algorithms and models.
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They’re called “inner areas”, they’re the spaces of a deep Italy, which have been kept far away from public debate for too long, without public investment and services, forced to a drastic fall in habitability, ever more subject to climate change and environmental disasters. They make up 60% of the national territory, almost fifteen million people live here; they make up a consistent portion of GDP and they’re home to quality manufacturing districts. And this is exactly where the idea for an Italy of the future needs to start from.
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When we talk about drugs, we also have to talk about economics and urban spaces, about repressive policies and laws. We have to talk about poverty and the lack of prospects. About inefficiency, about markets, about capital and the laws of offer and demand. Drugs open and close each phase, from the heroin epidemic of the seventies to the current opioid crisis, which is destroying the heartland of America. Drugs are the one perfect good that can never be overproduced, and the one market that never creates a bubble. In short, they’re secretly a capitalist’s dream.
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In the western world, poverty is an epidemic amongst low-wage workers. Introducing, extending and increasing the minimum wage are just some of the ways in which we can face this social crisis. In the United States, the federal minimum wage amounts to 7 dollars and 25 cents per hour, and it hasn’t gone up since 2009 – despite inflation and the increase in productivity. While the current presidential candidates seem to want to dodge the issue, the virus of poverty continues to wreak havoc amongst the invisible army of working poor.
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The ex-president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi delivers his report on European competitiveness, and invites us to change our current course. The European Union is going through a crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, by geo-political instability, by competition with China and by a change in the assets of globalization. Just like back in the days of his speech whatever it takes, Draghi continues to push for “more Europe”, and for the sharing of debt on a continental scale.
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On the night of June 14 2017, seventy-two people die in the flames of Grenfell Tower, in North Kensington, London City. 221 feet high, 24 stories tall, housing 120 apartments, Grenfell Tower is built in 1974 as part of a public housing plan. An appendage of urban blight in the poor and multicultural district of Hammersmith. The building is renovated in 2014 with cheap materials that are so flammable that the entire high rise catches fire in just a few minutes. The Grenfell Tower fire is a class fire, emblematic of “necro-politics” which produces both profit and death. And in the West, those that die are always the poor and forgotten, the hordes of the army of invisibles.
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If tennis is a metaphor of life, then it’s also a metaphor of finance – seeing as finance determines every aspect of life itself. There’s a strong connection between the trajectories impressed onto a tennis ball and the thousands of variables that dominate financial exchanges. Just like there’s a certain manner by which to face an opponent on the other side of the net, and by which to maneuver the fluctuations of the markets. Recently, Roger Federer – one of the greatest tennis players of all time - received a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree from Dartmouth College. The champion’s commencement speech is an inspiring lesson on how to accept both victory and defeat: in tennis, on the financial markets, and in life.
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There’s something in common between Soviet Lieutenant Stanislav Petrov, American activist Aaron Swartz and the co-founder of OpenAI Ilya Sutskever. In different times and ways, all three of them have put aside their timidity and opposed the war-thirsty, proprietary and neo-feudal order incarnated by computers, algorithms and more-or-less thinking machines. Timidity itself (and its antonyms) reminds us of the importance of remaining human.
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Since June 2019, Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez has been the President of the Republic of El Salvador. Bukele hasn’t just freed the country from the throttle of drug gangs, but also started an unexpected economic upturn with the introduction of bitcoin as legal tender. It’s something that has never been tried before, and it’s been reaping enormous benefits in terms of the sustainability of debt, on the country’s international image, and on its support of “clean” energy sources for crypto mining. Welcome to El Salvador, where mythology and science fiction walk together. Where the future is already here.
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Leather jacket, mirror shades, a neatly trimmed beard and slick hair, Nayib Bukele has been the President of the Republic of El Salvador since 2019. Following his election, he’s repressed the drug gangs in his country with an iron fist. Last February he won a second mandate using a constitutional loophole. But Bukele has also brought about a significant economic development: starting from 2022 he recognized bitcoin as legal tender in his country. El Salvador is the first nation in the world to attempt such an experiment.
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This May 10 we lost James Harris Simons, a legend of high finance, the so-called “King of Quants”, the mathematician who left university and conquered the markets. In 1982, he founded the New York Renaissance Technologies, which would soon become one the greatest global hedge fund firms in the world. Forbes said of JHS that he was “arguably the world’s greatest investor”. Simons found success by applying mathematical models and computer algorithms to financial fluctuations. He turned record profits and he almost always won out. Almost…
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We live in an age of permanent catastrophes: viruses and wars, nuclear threats and climate crises. If danger is everywhere, then it’s necessary to seek protection in closed up and impenetrable spaces: such as the North Star Missile Silo, one of the most secure havens ever made. North Star can be found in Kansas, and it was built to withstand an atomic explosion and every type of catastrophe. In short, a symbol of the cold war is once again back in fashion. In 2021, during the pandemic, the silo was auctioned off to a private owner at a base price of about 900,000 dollars. The space is impenetrable and the dream of the west is unspeakable. Welcome to the bunker.
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Theatres are seeing the release of Civil War, by British director Alex Garland, and in the meanwhile the United States truly seem to be under the influence of irreconcilable differences. If we look to the markets we can see the best of all possible worlds, but in the streets Fentanyl is causing thousands of deaths, the middle class is getting poorer and poorer, and student debt is out of control. Meanwhile, investments focus mainly of the defense and arms industries, or towards safe-haven assets such as gold and bitcoin. War is always good business in a nation where the divide between American dream and American nightmare is greater than ever before.
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On April 24th 2013, at 8.45. Rana Plaza – an eight-story building which houses several activities including some textile factories, at Savar near Dacca in Bangladesh – collapses upon itself. 1,134 people are killed, and 2,515 are wounded. The carnage wasn’t unexpected – and at the same time, it was the direct consequence of a production model which is ravaging our environment and society. It’s called “fast fashion” and it guarantees the systematic production of clothing at low prices thanks to the ruthless exploitation of workers, the lack of safety measures and the heavy use of petrol-based synthetic fibers. Over ten years have passed since that day, and the massacre of Rana Plaza is still one of the most brutal repressions of Western society.
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Humans have being changing the landscape and balance of the Alps for over a century. The ecosystem was compromised after the devastation of the First World War and its reconstruction based on a monoculture of European spruce trees. One hundred years later, extreme weather events caused by climate change and the infestation of the so-called “spruce-bark beetle” have forced us to measure the ruinous effects of an economic model that has cancelled out biodiversity in the woodlands and opened up the mountain to hundreds of dangers.
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A catastrophe is befalling the woodlands of Italy; in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It’s scientific name is Ips typographus, but it’s better known as the European Spruce Bark Beetle, because it loves to devour spruce bark trees. It’s a tiny beetle that feeds off wood, often attacking weakened or dead trees, but capable of attacking living ones as well if in large enough numbers. Nowadays, there are large patches of dark dry trees in the Alps. It’s a scourge caused by many factors: the change in natural balance, the destruction of an ecosystem, extreme weather and a devastating development model.
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The financial indicators right now are wildly optimistic. The bond market especially is looking reliable, still supported by the liquidity injected last year to save regional banks affected by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Also, the stock market is seeing a large wave of purchases – not just institutional investors and hedge funds either, but families (who never invested so massively in equity like now). In this election year, the USA is a deeply divided country. But where politics divides, finance unites – and there is peace at least in the United Markets of America.
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Obesity is the disease of our modern affluent societies. More than one billion people suffer from it globally, which is double the amount of 1990. According to predictions, by the year 2035 they could be two billion. In the USA, 32% of the male adult population and 37% of the female adult population is obese. The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk has recently launched Ozempic, a miracle drug for the obese that has taken the American market by storm (and not only). However, despite the facade of optimism, there are thousands of sides to consider when it come to issues such as prevention and accessibility to these new cures.
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Back during the gold rush, there was a sudden explosion of inequality. In the mining towns, some owned concessions, business licenses and strategic assets – and these were the ones who made the most money. Everyone else (especially the miners) just got poorer. It’s called the “Cantillon effect” and it explains the deep imbalance between the distribution of wealth there where it cycles the most. Yesterday like today. In the XXI century just like in the days of the boomtowns, expansionary monetary policies, quantitative easing and the emission of public debt have all contributed to the erosion of monetary value. This has deepened social inequality, especially in the Silicon Valley – which appears as a frontier of technological innovation, but which looks more and more like our tragic and unfair future.
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This November, the USA will elect its president. The markets may seem to portray an image consistent growth, with unemployment under 4% and the best markets in recent memory, but the victory of the democrats is anything but certain. The Biden administration managed the post-Covid phase with a new course and by injecting trillions of dollars into strategic national production. But the situation is fragile. There’s an America that’s suffering from high inflation, and that hasn’t been able to compensate by investing. Many Americans have more debt than ever, and mortgage rates are rising along with the price of homes. This is an America that struggles and which is afraid, which stopped dreaming, and may well drag the world down into its own nightmare.
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