As long as the undertaking (investing/trading) has winners and losers, and in most cases far more losers than winners, there will be those who cry foul. It's rational, even though it manifests itself in comically irrational ways (conspiracy theories, victim complexes and the like). Don't get me wrong: at times, foul is indeed the appropriate cry. Absolutely - no market, financial or other, is a pristine place of interaction; the price discovery process can bring out the worst in participants. But in far more cases than not, it's either a complete lack of/refusal to understand(ing), sour grapes, or some laughable expectation of a fabled "level playing field" or "equal access" that's the source of the angst.
However.
If you want to point blame at any single factor - really impossible to do, but at least as a major contributor to some of today's problems - you need to look back further than failed energy companies and accounting firms, decimals, dot com stocks, Milken and Boesky, insider trading, and the like.
You need to look to May of 1976 and the typically clumsy, misguided (however well-meaning) regulatory action that, among other major factors, sewed the seeds for decades to come for firms, at times, to play close to the line and in some cases, cross it.
LPS5 |
