David Letterman - Brian Williams on Wall Street's Free Fall

[Poll_Blind]

Run time: 02:47 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRNrl-858qA   Posted on YouTube: May 06, 2010 By YouTube Member: CBS Views on YouTube: 18   Posted on DU: May 07, 2010 By DU Member: Poll_Blind Views on DU: 1786

 
I have no idea what caused this but this is one of the theories being pushed right now, along with HFT (High Frequency Trading).

The hitting the B for billion instead of M for million is a straight up lie, of course.

[Poll_Blind]

1. "The dirty little secret is...the world has no money and the Emperor has no clothes." n/t

PB

[aquart]

5. There's money. It's stuck in some greedy little fists and needs to be unstuck.

The rich are insufficiently taxed.

[szatmar666]

7. Bingo! Too many speculators manipulating stocks

Last minute profit taking before the derivatives game is ended by new regulations?! Expect more roller coaster as Goldman and CO short the market, hype oil prices and in general screw the real economy.

It's also part of the fascist agenda: expect more and more talks about cutting social programs. Obama is going to be under new pressure to privatize social security and the British electorate just voted in the Huns (conservatives) running on a "destroy the welfare state" madness. People are manipulated too, not just markets, it's truly crazy out there.

[bulloney]

12. I agree. There's money. It's in too few peoples' hands. And these people want more.

[PM Martin]

2. Germany is the default 'Bank of Europe'

True. The Eurodollar is a complete failure.

[grasswire]

3. if Brian is scared, it's bad

He said he was sickened by a 9/11 sort of feeling as he watched the DOW sink, and said there's a daisy chain of Portugal, Ireland, Spain coming along the pike and the world has NO MONEY and he thought it was so bad and dangerous that he would not dare leave the house.

Holy. Moley.

[Warpy]

4. So what was it? Hacking? Hedge fund shenanigans?

They'd better find out and fix it. They'd also better get it together to find some better protection against another free fall drop like that.

[raouldukelives]

6. Just curious. Why do the markets close?

I mean, my 7-11 is 24/7. How come Wall St. ain't?

[Hekate]

8. #1 because even traders have to sleep #2 there are stock exchanges all over the world now...

... so in a real sense The Market never sleeps, or to coin a phrase, The Sun never sets on The Market Empire.

When the stock markets tanked in late 2008, I sat up at 2:00 a.m California time watching BBC while that Quest guy almost had hysterics as the numbers rolled in from the Nikkei, the Hang Seng, and on and on and on. Most enlightening.

Hekate

[szatmar666]

10. hedgefunds use after hours to manipulate the market

There is always a market that's open. What EU or Japan is doing is valuable information and most of it is happening while traders are "at sleep", ie. making money for their well connected clients by placing trades on global info not available to those who are forced to stop before close time. If it never closed they couldn't do that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_mutual_fund_scandal

[Hekate]

11. Ahhhhh. More enlightenment.

[raouldukelives]

13. Thanks! nt

[DWinNJ]

9. Sooner or later

someone is going to change that and screw things over but,
what happened in the market today is the reason you don’t want the market going 24 hours.
There needs to be a mechanism that forces people from operating on automatic and take time to think (or sleep on it) and that is, at a set time the market closes.