The Trading Game

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The Book of the Week is “The Trading Game, A Confession” by Gary Stevenson, published in 2024. This blogger highly encourages the reader to peruse the entire “Wall Street” and Economics categories of this blog in order to gain a better understanding of financial matters and economics.

In March 2007, the 1987-born author began working on the Fixed Income Trading Floor at the Short Term Interest Rates Trading Desk in the Foreign Exchange section of Citibank in its London branch. He had grown up in a tough, poor neighborhood in East London. He beat the odds for someone of his demographic group, considering the fierce competition in both getting accepted to a prestigious university and getting a job in currency trading.

Stevenson nurtured an aspiration to make lots of money. Fortunately, his talent and hard work in mathematics allowed him to score high on standardized exams. He attended the London School of Economics where he rubbed shoulders with mostly male, wealthy elitists whose fathers gave them a leg up in life, and whose futures were almost guaranteed to be bright. At school, when he won a game involving hypothetical securities trading, Stevenson’s life turned around. For, he won an internship which turned into a career.

After a few lucky breaks and bold moves on his part, the author was just hitting his stride in work-experience when he happened to be at the right place at the right time to earn extremely large financial gains from a triple-whammy disaster. In March of 2011, about twenty thousand people died in Japan due to an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown of three power plants. Amidst the resulting financial turmoil and previous turmoil of the 2008 worldwide financial crises, Stevenson made a percentage of the millions upon millions of dollars he earned in currency trading for Citibank.

Stevenson alone in his department had been correct in gaming the situation. Everyone else had been wrong and they lost money. Nevertheless, he was still emotionally troubled. He bore two major similarities with Alan Turing– another genius: social dysfunctionality, and indifference to how he looked and what he wore.

Stevenson was one of the proverbial three kinds of people (geniuses in the minority)– the kind who knew what was happening and made things happen. The vast majority account for the other two kinds of people– brainwashed, unwashed masses who watched what was happening, and then still wondered what happened.

In the early 2010’s, the author came to the realization that there would NEVER be economic recovery of any financially-struggling countries in the European Union while the Swiss National Bank kept interest rates at or below zero. The other traders in his department optimistically kept repeating that interest rates HAD to rise sooner or later, because they had bet wrong.

But, the tiny percentage of the super-wealthy, super-powerful people of the world sought to maintain the then-status quo, because it made THEM even richer, and the poor, poorer, as the cliche goes. The income inequality of the world would eventually result in a slave-based economy (as existed in ancient times) all over again.

Read the book to learn much more of Stevenson’s personal and professional life, and his times. As is well known, the United States is one of the major economic superpowers of the world, and its politics are part and parcel of that. Here’s a little ditty on its momentary political situation.

LET THE BEST TEAM WIN

sung to the tune of “Let the River Run” with apologies to Carly Simon, BMG Gold Songs C’est Music and Tcf Music Pub Inc.

[Spoken: We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.]

Let the best team win.
Let’s all peaceFULly watch the changes.
Come the new, new Washington.

Brilliant ideas rise.
The media lies, about, and smears them.
And celebs get themselves in your face.

It’s asking for the taking,
blaming, deep-faking.
Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

Through the hate and all.
It’s who we are:
Place a trail of desire
on the White House lawn.

It’s asking for the taking.
Just hold on now.
Democratic convention will be a show
you’ve never even seen in political history.

Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

It’s asking for the taking,
blaming, deep-faking.
Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

Let the best team win.
Let’s all peaceFULly watch the changes [watch the changes]
Come the new, new Washington.

Toast at the Borderline – BONUS POST

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This is what Trump will be singing the next three months. It’s ALL he’s got, unluckily for him.

TOAST AT THE BORDERLINE

sung to the tune of “Close to the Borderline” with apologies to Billy Joel.

CrowdStrike-crash, heat wave, D-P-M-S, SHOTS, were fired.
I’m not dead, but Harris made the border-crisis, very dire.
JD was standing there witnessing how the crisis is taking, its toll.
Migrants slip through. They’re all criminals.
It’s Harris’ fault, says every poll.
Just for me, women have-to pretty-their-face,
The black people get, special TREATment for their race.
I get attacked be-cause Secret Service is-n’t around.
They’re a disgrace. Under-my-rule, better-men are found.
Life is rough, but I’m so tough.
I cry no tears at any time.
I survived, I’m still alive, but

with Harris, we’re toast at the borderline, uh huh, toast at the borderline, huh, uh huh.

Oh, all-you-see are criminals and the homeless in blue-states these days.
And Biden raised PRICES on gas. He was terrible, so terrible, in SO many ways.
Rich man, poor man, I’ll keep-away the tax man, when I get elected this round.
With the Democrats– well, we’re gonna ALL go to hell with their next big meltdown.
I got remote control and a color TV.
Those troubles at the border, we all can see.
I got real truthful friends. The Democrats LIE.
They don’t know how to lead. On a Marxist-agenda they rely.
I’m so great. I can’t deny.
I started-a-revolution. I didn’t even try.
Don’t know why I’m still a nice guy, but

with Harris, we’re toast at the borderline, uh huh, toast at the borderline, huh, uh huh.

I’ve had to sacrifice so many things. The Democrats are throw-ing it all away.
They don’t know how to do anything.
The border is wide open, it gets worse every day. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I need to teach JD my mad skills.
I need a lawyer for my Witch Hunt bills.
I need a banker to finance our debt. But Democrat support, I’ll never get.

Isn’t new what they put me through, but everybody knows I’ll make us great again. Another night I fought the good fight, but

with Harris, we’re toast at the borderline, uh huh, toast at the borderline, huh, uh huh,
toast at the borderline, line, line, line, huh, uh huh…

Cobb

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The Book of the Week is “Cobb, The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball, A Biography” by Al Stump, published in 1994. Born in December 1886, Cobb grew up in Royston, Georgia.

In 1904, with big-league dreams, Cobb began “paying his dues” in semi-professional baseball. It was employment-at-will. The team paid his travel expenses to away-games at stadiums around southern states via horse-and-buggy in all sorts of weather. The food consisted of bean soup, hog jowls and grits.

Throughout his baseball career, Cobb behaved badly in various ways to get attention and his name known and remembered. He took full advantage of every opportunity to make his own stats look good, although he himself was a social outcast on his own team. He was a man of supernatural ability in both hitting and fielding, and he groomed his legend to the maximum.

Early on, Cobb got himself thrown out of the game for shoving, and spitting on the umpire. He began many a bench-clearing brawl. He repeatedly, anonymously wrote letters of shameless self-promotion to then-famous sports writer Grantland Rice at the Atlanta Journal to get his name in the paper, because his team was too low-level to be covered by the media.

Cobb pioneered various kinds of slides while base-stealing, in ways that would intentionally plant his sharpened metal cleats into basemen’s legs, to injure them, and make them drop the ball. No rule against that dirty trick was imposed during his career. He acted the drama queen– moving the second-base bag closer to third base by kicking it a few inches in mock frustration. Cobb would loudly comment on the game in order to psychologically rattle opposing players.

Americans were shocked when they learned a couple of years after the scheme was executed, that some Chicago White Sox players sought to financially benefit from deliberately losing the 1919 World Series because organized crime figures organized gambling on the games.

In 1921, Cobb simultaneously played for and managed the major league Detroit Tigers. He was a hypocrite, banning his team (except himself) from playing golf, and during spring-training, ordering practice on Sundays. He himself didn’t show up for the latter, as he was visiting the minor league teams he co-owned in Rhode Island and Georgia.

“One corrupt game in every 300? Club owners blanched at that news. They had covered up the rewards systems, allowing it to pervade a game believed by millions of Americans to be on the square. Now, the outcome was shameful disclosure.”

Just as dishonesty waxes and wanes over decades in various areas of American life, it’s time to clean it up again in politics. BUT– only after one big burst of phony outrage spikes media ratings in the next few months, as American society values overpaid noisemakers (talking heads) on the idiot box and sports figures, more than: passionate teachers, sincere public servants, whistleblowers, and muckrakers pushing for social justice.

It is no accident that it’s more expensive than ever to be an idiot these days. Prior to cable TV (beginning in the 1950’s), the price of a TV set included the vast wasteland of entertainment and ads via pure broadcasting. For most Americans, watching TV now entails the purchase of an overpriced monitor and on top of that, payment of a monthly installment forever (!) to receive that vast wasteland (which still includes ads!), for more choices. That installment helps pay the obscene salaries of the said overpaid noisemakers and sports figures. The idiot box and radio pay people to talk. And certain politicians pay people not to talk.

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about Cobb’s family life and career– the man, the myth, the legend.

Nightline

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The Book of the Week is “Nightline, History in the Making and the Making of Television” by Ted Koppel and Kyle Gibson, published in 1996. The TV show Nightline, and this book were aired and published during the Reagan Era and president Bill Clinton’s first term, prior to the historical revisionism and 20 / 20 hindsight of even more modern times– during which politics is even more sophisticated. And when political awareness is higher than ever, due to social media’s pervasiveness.

In November 1979, Koppel began to host on ABC News at 11:30pm, what he thought was slated to be a temporary show, on the Iran hostage crisis. Thanks to videotape and satellites, he was able to feature a few different people who could talk to one another live, simultaneously, halfway around the world. By March 1980, this format had evolved into a news-analyzing talk-show called Nightline.

One of many moments in which viewers got to see major historical events happening right before their eyes, was the April 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in the state of Washington. In 1985, Koppel and his crew televised a week of episodes in South Africa on apartheid, in color, and black and white. Actually. Also in 1985, in simulcasting another set of shows in a violence-prone area, they commemorated the 10th anniversary of the U.S. pullout from Vietnam. “Le Du Tho and Henry Kissinger, co-winners of the 1971 Nobel Prize, together again for the first time.” In 1988, they went to Israel to cover the never-ending dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Al Campanis had played baseball with Jackie Robinson in 1946. In April 1987, the former became a victim of cancel culture after he made some unpopular comments on Nightline. “The bigger problem for baseball was that Campanis had inadvertently revealed an ugly truth about racial attitudes in the front office, and firing him wasn’t going to end what was now a national debate.”

Read the book to learn of numerous other episodes of an educational late-night TV show that was obsolesced by the changing times in America.

Mr. Republican – EXTRA BONUS POST

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Here’s an update on the American political situation.

MR. REPUBLICAN

sung to the tune of “Mrs. Robinson” with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel.

The smear’s on YOU, Mr. Republican.
Females hate you more than you will know.
What do you mean, NO?
Stop the misogyny please, Mr. Republican.
Plenty of legal cases still to play.
Yay, yay, yay.
Yea, yea, yea.

We know all too well, about you and your wives.
With all you do, you hurt yourself.
Look at how others see you. You’ll see no sympathetic eyes.
All your polling hounds
will bring the message home.

The smear’s on YOU, Mr. Republican.
Females hate you more than you will know.
What do you mean, NO?
Stop the misogyny please, Mr. Republican.
Plenty of legal cases still to play.
Yay, yay, yay.
Yea, yea, yea.

Attacking in a sensitive place where every frat boy goes.
Go back to middle school with your behavior.
It’s not a secret. Old-boy Republicans are there.
Worst of all, you’re brainwashing the kids.
Spew, spew, spew, spew, Mr. Republican.
Females hate you more than you will know.
What do you mean, NO?
Stop the misogyny please, Mr. Republican.
Plenty of legal cases still to play.
Yay, yay, yay.
Yea, yea, yea.

Watching the idiot box spout the same old platitudes,
saying the Dems will lose the race.
MouthPIECES of the GOP,
rant and rave on-the-“news.”
Having ONLY angry white male voters, you LOSE.

Where have you gone, good-government intellectuals?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you,
muckrakers, too.
You’re still complaining, frat-boy Republicans,
though Sleepy Joe has left and gone away.
Oh, happy day.
You’ve lost your way.

Shadow

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“… the isolated and powerful imperial presidency was over. The nation seemed to be falling in love with its new Midwestern president.”

-NOT January 2025, but August 1974. Regardless of where he (or she) is from, though, the absolute best American presidential candidate would have maximum life-experience, knowledge and wisdom, but still be lucid and sane.

The Book of the Week is “Shadow, Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate” by Bob Woodward, published in 1999. This primer on presidential power-struggles was written toward the end of the Clinton Era–prior to the historical revisionism and 20 / 20 hindsight of the resurgence of American presidential power.

President Jimmy Carter made a campaign promise that his administration was going to behave morally. Yet, in summer 1977, his budget director Bert Lance got in trouble for personal financial conflicts and hypocrisy. In 1978, Carter signed the Ethics in Government Act, some aspects of which turned out to be a can of worms for later presidents. Pursuant to the Act, an independent counsel was to be appointed to investigate illegal behavior of a president when there was probable cause. However, in the next two decades, overzealous, viciously vengeful, legally wily government officials abused their power to launch witch hunts. Any counsel appointed could never really be “independent.”

The Justice Department has the authority to investigate wrongdoing by a president. Nonetheless, the Department serves under the president, who is presumably considered innocent until proven guilty. But, most of the time, the president’s political enemies clamor for the administration to appoint the “independent” counsel (a prosecutor) whose job is to find wrongdoing.

By the summer of 1995, the above conundrum dogged president Bill and first lady Hillary Clinton. “The FBI couldn’t investigate itself. The White House was at the center, and the Justice Department also would have zero credibility investigating its own bureau or the White House.” “Independent” counsel Ken Starr twisted the Ethics in Government Act for his own purposes in instigating the tabloidy probes into Whitewater business transactions, the White House travel office activities, Vince Foster’s death, and later on, Bill Clinton’s sex life.

In May 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a private party could bring a civil suit against a president still in office. Thus, the Paula Jones case could proceed. Even so, at that time, now-Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh believed that Ken Starr was abusing his power as an independent counsel in maximally, mean-spiritedly probing the Clintons. Bill Clinton didn’t help his cause, though, by launching vigorous denials and counterattacks, instead of coming clean.

Anyway, read the book to learn of how post-Watergate presidents handled the changing political times in connection with presidential power amid increasing partisan hostility. As is well known, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Excesses reach a screaming crescendo; dissatisfaction reaches critical mass, and the people say, enough’s enough.

In order to boost their ratings (and profitability), the media incessantly teases Americans with propagandizing, incitement and phoniness. But, not to worry. When the nation is at its breaking point, there will be surprises. Again, DO NOT be fooled by Trump’s “new Nixon” act. Here’s what’s actually going on.

THE MINDS THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’

sung to the tune of “The Times They Are A-Changin’ with apologies to Bob Dylan.

Protect your history books YOU have at home,
beCAUSE revisionists around you have grown.
Stop fretting. Soon our government’s fate will be known.
If you vote, it’s democracy you’ll be saving.
It’ll be really exciting, you’ll see a new tone.

For the minds, they are a-changin’.

Come readers and thinkers who are mature and kind.
And keep your ears open, it’s compromise you’ll find.
Don’t give up too soon, for you’ll see the signs.
There’s no telling truth from the raving.
You just might be in for a pleasant surprise.

For the minds, they are a-changin’.

Come senators, Congress reps, do the correct thing.
Don’t be a greedy hypocrite, don’t act like a king.
Or you will get outed, you will feel the sting.
There’s a new ethical attitude dawning.
It’ll soon shake your conscience and become a thing.

For the minds, they are a-changin’.

Come community leaders throughout the land.
Tyranny is trembling despite best laid plans.
Think for yourself: democracy is at your command.
You’ll replace the rapidly aging.
To the young idealists, you’ll lend your hand.

For the minds, they are a-changin’.

Sure, there are still pawns,
but the worst it is past,
though the nation’s mandates appear to be vast.
Targets of hatred should no more be harassed.
The ugliness is rapidly fading.
And the best characters will be hired for the cast.

For the minds, they are a-changin’.

Cable News Confidential

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Foreword

Hannah Arendt, in an essay on Socrates, wrote that a statesman of high caliber listens— meaning, attempts to understand another speaker’s views. Charles Lindbergh and Joseph P. Kennedy obviously failed to listen to signals from their own countrymen; for, they hitched their star to Hitler. They figured if he won the war, they’d reap the spoils. Strangely, in 1968, even Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was fooled by the “new Nixon” who was actually the same old vicious, wily, power-hungry criminal. It pays to listen to the other side to see historical behavioral patterns that aren’t going to change.

Post

The Book of the Week is “Cable News Confidential, My Misadventures in Corporate Media” by Jeff Cohen published in 2006. The author was born in the 1950’s in the Detroit area. He detailed the now-expected, and standard: hypocrisy, shenanigans, unfairness and imbalance he encountered while appearing as a political commentator at three different cable channels into 2004.

Beginning in 1997, the author appeared as a Left-wing panelist on the TV show, Fox News Watch. Also present were a Right-winger and a Centrist. On Fox, Cohen was allowed to bite the hand that fed him– criticizing the media for its biases, profiteering, smears and lies, etc. during his five-minute appearances on political shows. He believed that the commentary was actually politically balanced for about a year. Thereafter, Right-wingers became the majority.

In the summer of 1999, George W. Bush’s cousin John Ellis wrote in a Boston Globe column that his covering the 2000 presidential-voting results on election night in November would be a conflict of interest. Nevertheless, Ellis was doing exactly that, on Fox News, wrongly announcing, at 2:16am Wednesday, the day after election day, that Bush was the winner in Florida and therefore, Bush had won the presidency. Unsurprisingly, Cohen personally witnessed Ellis’ kind of unethical behavior over and over again.

From January to August 1998, MSNBC covered Bill Clinton’s sex life with Monica Lewinsky. Too bad, Lewinsky missed a valuable opportunity to become a political activist. Instead of allowing the media to shame her, she could have engaged in a public relations coup with the right messaging.

Anyway, in May 2001, Chandra Levy– a female intern– went missing, at which time the major cable “news” stations put her boss Democrat Congressman Gary Condit under the microscope nonstop until September 10, 2001. Other “news” stories the idiot box could have covered instead included:

  • On September 9, 2001, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was demanding billions of dollars to fund the creation of weaponry to defend against America’s enemies’ ballistic missiles. But, contrarily, he was saying that the president was opposing the U.S. Senate’s proposal that would shift the funding of said weaponry to fund counter-terror measures.
  • On September 10, 2001, U.S. intelligence agents heard al-Qaeda members utter the phrases, “the match begins now” and “tomorrow is zero hour.” But, contrarily, head of the Justice Department, John Ashcroft opposed the FBI’s request to add tens of millions of dollars to its budget to hire additional personnel to counter terror threats.

Cohen was constantly backing up his arguments with facts, such as when Chris Matthews basically denied that the United States did not send its military into other countries willy-nilly– that Iraq in 2003 was an exception. Cohen countered with occasions after 1945 during which America was an aggressor, that included 21 different territories into the single-digit 2000’s.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s dismay with his employers’ practices that included much, much more Right-wing commentary than Left, and lack of fact-checking.

Endnote

By agreeing to debate and softening his rhetoric, Donald Trump is showing he has reached the bargaining stage of grief, in the death of his political career. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY HIS “NEW NIXON” ACT.