It's Not Just The Stock Market That's Rigged: The Entire Status Quo Is Rigged

One has to wonder why we are dodging this truth about what we've become: a nation that turns a blind eye to skimmers, scammers and legal looting.

As in the story of the Emperor's new clothes, the onlooker who declares the obvious-- in this case, that the stock market is rigged--shatters the consensus lie. In the current saga, author Michael Lewis plays the role of the truth-telling boy, and everyone who went along with the fiction that the Emperor's high-frequency trading finery was resplendent is revealed as credulous, complicit or worse.

Lewis' new book is Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt.

The high-frequency trading (HFT) scam is old news, and a number of fine books have addressed the mechanics of the skim, for example Dark Pools: High-Speed Traders, A.I. Bandits, and the Threat to the Global Financial System by Scott Patterson.

Many in the alternative financial media have written about HFT for years. Here are two of my own entries on the topic:

The Stock Market Is an "Attractive Nuisance" and Should Be Closed (August 22, 2012)

We Need a New Stock Market (September 14, 2012)

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