Wall Street’s Killer Instinct Is Death Knell for Jobs

From Pam Mertens at CounterPunch—I think it’s time to take Wall Street literally: they’ve made it abundantly clear they have an insatiable appetite for killing things: the housing market, the financial system, the economy, reform legislation, the next generation’s future.

Wall Street is so steeped in destruction that the symbols of death are everywhere.  Wall Street calls the big newspaper ads they take out to herald the launch of their market offerings a “tombstone.” (To understand how appropriate that is, consider the billions in bond and stock offerings they raise for Big Tobacco.)  What does Wall Street call the completion of a buy or sell order: an “execution.” (Think of how many derivative trades they “executed” for the now crippled, life support patients Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG; or the off balance sheet vehicles they created for Enron, WorldCom, and dozens of now bankrupt companies.)

Wall Street calls an order to complete a trade without any reduction in quantity a “fill or kill.”  This could just as reasonably be called a “fill or cancel” order but it’s so much more fun for the thundering herd to race around a trading floor screaming “kill it, kill it!”

What is the benefit to Wall Street in killing things or bringing the share price of companies to near worthless?  Tails they win; heads you lose.  Wall Street can and does make enormous profits on bets that share prices will decline (shorting), that companies will disappear (credit default swaps), that the economy will crater (interest rate swaps).  And there’s a slogan on Wall Street: the trend is your friend.  When it’s clear the bull is lying in the center of the ring (think Lehman’s death and the Merrill Lynch shotgun wedding on September 15, 2008), Wall Street moves its bets to the downside. 

No one has their jive aligned with their agenda any better than Citigroup’s traders.  When they set out to inflict pain on the European bond market in 2004, they labeled the trade “Dr. Evil.”  Citi also created a structured finance vehicle that greased the skids for the collapse of Italian dairy giant Parmalat, dubbed Buconero, Italian for “Black Hole.”

– Read the rest at Pam Mertens at CounterPunch.