HFT – dazed and confused
Dazed and Confused’s famous “School’s out” scene starts with a warning from a rather candid teacher: “This summer when you’re being inundated by all the American bicentennial fourth of July brouhaha. Don’t forget what you’re celebrating and that’s the fact that a bunch of slave owning aristocratic white males didn’t want to pay their taxes.”
It came to mind as I was reading Scott Locklin’s review of the new Michael Lewis book. I’m a big Lewis fan (a highlight of my career was being CCed in on an email to Lewis, which perhaps says something non-flattering about my career), but amidst this week’s “brouhaha” over Flash Boys, I think Scott makes some very interesting points.
I know a few HFT type people. One of ‘em might be even be as rich as Michael Lewis. So far, all the ones I have met are clever and decent people, and I figure whatever they’ve managed to earn by the sweat of their brows, they deserve it. I’m not real pleased with the idea of a small group of decently paid, politically helpless nerds being the fall guys for a bunch of crooked oligarchs who don’t want to pay for their liquidity.