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Are you serious? The idea that speculation is bad dates back to old and embarrassing ant-Semitic rhetoric. Speculation is an inevitable property of markets an

Are you serious? The idea that speculation is bad dates back to old and embarrassing ant-Semitic rhetoric. Speculation is an inevitable property of markets and is indistinguishable from more "concrete" behaviors such as hedging. Suppose a farmer buys rain insurance but not hail insurance. He's hedging one and gambling on the other. Yet he bought no contract for the latter. Such transactions do help build productive enterprises, as they help with price discovery of the shares and add liquidity (which makes the investment more sound for everyone).

pook 17y ago
http://mises.org/daily/320 http://mises.org/daily/320 a history of speculation and a rebuttal of many of its disparagements
- _delirium 17y ago
  That does come from mises.org, though, and sort of says what you'd expect the Mises Institute to say about speculation. Which doesn't make it wrong, but does mean you're getting one particular side of a long-running debate in economics (roughly, the Austrian-School side). There are a lot more perspectives in the literature: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22role+of+speculation%22 http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22role+of+spe...
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Search this doc for "speculators" to see where this is really coming from. The modern arguments against speculation are just echoes of this. http://www.jrbooksonline.com/Intl_Jew_full_version/ij23.htm http://www.jrbooksonline.com/Intl_Jew_full_version/ij23.htm
    - _delirium 17y ago
      It surely doesn't come from that, which you must know is a kind of lame slander, the usual "the Nazis did [x], so you're a Nazi" non-argument. General attacks on speculation and finance go much further back than anti-Semitic worries about "Jewish finance", to long before the medieval era when European Jews became associated with finance--- the Jewish scriptures themselves, and writings of the early Christians, both have a bunch of attacks on finance in them. Surely the Talmud itself isn't anti-Semitic? And a modern quantitative understanding of the role of speculation is pretty unconnected to Jews (most financiers are atheists or Christians, anyway).
      - grandalf 17y ago
        I know it's not 100% derived from that, there are similarities in how it's articulated, though, one must acknowledge.
      - asdflkj 17y ago
        Not to take any sides, but you're wrong on two counts. First, Talmud itself may well be anti-Semitic in this sense, only this is irrelevant. For example, the Bible says, quite clearly and redundantly, many things that Christians reject. Bible doesn't matter--Christians and their actions do. Likewise, Judaists matter and not the Talmud. Second, Jews, in the sense of targets of most anti-Semitism beyond the troglodytic variety, are not a religious, but rather a social construct. Hitler wrote this in Mein Kampf, and this is why it's not okay to talk about anymore. The thing that makes it tricky is that while the racial aspect is relevant, it is not relevant in the way that makes criticizing Jews racist. That would have been Jew-by-culture <=> Jew-by-race. Instead, we have Jew-by-culture => Jew-by-race.
        joe_the_user 17y ago
        Huh? "Talmud itself may well be anti-Semitic in this sense" In what sense? In the sense of attacking speculation since it's been pre-decided that all attacks on financial speculation are anti-semitic going back to Roman times?? The possibility of the Talmud being anti-semitic was simply assumed and implicitly rejected by parent as a standard rhetorical device so I'm not sure what you're driving at here. (and while usual the homily about actions mattering more than words is appropriate in some context, here it's apropo of nothing given that the overall discussion concerns the origin and implications of various criticisms). Modern antisemitism may indeed involve the cultural racial equation you describe but this doesn't demonstrate that either modern finance theory and early Jewish scripture, the criticisms of finance mentioned by parent, have any relation to modern antisemitism.
        asdflkj 17y ago
        I don't understand your question. Edit: I see that you've edited your post. _delirium's post had two things in it that are incorrect. It was highly rated, so many other people are presumably wrong in the same way. I pointed out why they're wrong. On most other topics, it wouldn't occur to anyone to object to my pointing out why some things are wrong, just because it wasn't apropo [sic] the origin of the thread. This is why I don't talk about this and a few other topics publicly unless I'm anonymous, and mostly even then. People just tell me to shut up, in so many words (and that's if I'm lucky).
    - jfager 17y ago
      Anti-semites link Jews to speculation, therefore all criticism of speculation is anti-semitic? Congratulations on the lamest troll I've ever seen on HN.
      - grandalf 17y ago
        The motives and moral decay historically attributed to Jews by anti-semites is the same as that currently attributed to speculators. Yes, finance is one area where Jews have historically had significant power and influence, and so the "anti-speculation" rhetoric is often wielded against them.
- artsrc 17y ago
  That article really misrepresents the issue in a serious way. It confuses what is necessary - taking risk, with what is reviled - extracting profit at the expense of others from the deficiencies of markets.
joe_the_user 17y ago
Hyman Minsky distinguishes three rough kind of finance: hedge, speculative and Ponzi. He argues that the movement of the economy towards speculative and then Ponzi finance is one of the motors of economic crisis. The implication is that a certain amount of regulation is useful here. ... and I don't think you can draw any lines between Minsky and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Indeed, "all criticism of speculation is anti-semitic" is as much a "conspiracy theory" as any other hot-button generalization.
artsrc 17y ago
Speculation is not always indistinguishable from hedging. If you have $100 in fixed rate debt, then a $100 fixed floating swap can be hedging. A $1,000 swap is speculating. Speculation sometimes has negative consequences for the economy. For example a few years ago oil prices were driven higher than they would otherwise be by speculation and this reduced GDP.

pook 17y ago

http://mises.org/daily/320 http://mises.org/daily/320 a history of speculation and a rebuttal of many of its disparagements

_delirium 17y ago
That does come from mises.org, though, and sort of says what you'd expect the Mises Institute to say about speculation. Which doesn't make it wrong, but does mean you're getting one particular side of a long-running debate in economics (roughly, the Austrian-School side). There are a lot more perspectives in the literature: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22role+of+speculation%22 http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22role+of+spe...
- grandalf 17y ago
  Search this doc for "speculators" to see where this is really coming from. The modern arguments against speculation are just echoes of this. http://www.jrbooksonline.com/Intl_Jew_full_version/ij23.htm http://www.jrbooksonline.com/Intl_Jew_full_version/ij23.htm
  - _delirium 17y ago
    It surely doesn't come from that, which you must know is a kind of lame slander, the usual "the Nazis did [x], so you're a Nazi" non-argument. General attacks on speculation and finance go much further back than anti-Semitic worries about "Jewish finance", to long before the medieval era when European Jews became associated with finance--- the Jewish scriptures themselves, and writings of the early Christians, both have a bunch of attacks on finance in them. Surely the Talmud itself isn't anti-Semitic? And a modern quantitative understanding of the role of speculation is pretty unconnected to Jews (most financiers are atheists or Christians, anyway).
    - grandalf 17y ago
      I know it's not 100% derived from that, there are similarities in how it's articulated, though, one must acknowledge.
    - asdflkj 17y ago
      Not to take any sides, but you're wrong on two counts. First, Talmud itself may well be anti-Semitic in this sense, only this is irrelevant. For example, the Bible says, quite clearly and redundantly, many things that Christians reject. Bible doesn't matter--Christians and their actions do. Likewise, Judaists matter and not the Talmud. Second, Jews, in the sense of targets of most anti-Semitism beyond the troglodytic variety, are not a religious, but rather a social construct. Hitler wrote this in Mein Kampf, and this is why it's not okay to talk about anymore. The thing that makes it tricky is that while the racial aspect is relevant, it is not relevant in the way that makes criticizing Jews racist. That would have been Jew-by-culture <=> Jew-by-race. Instead, we have Jew-by-culture => Jew-by-race.
      - joe_the_user 17y ago
        Huh? "Talmud itself may well be anti-Semitic in this sense" In what sense? In the sense of attacking speculation since it's been pre-decided that all attacks on financial speculation are anti-semitic going back to Roman times?? The possibility of the Talmud being anti-semitic was simply assumed and implicitly rejected by parent as a standard rhetorical device so I'm not sure what you're driving at here. (and while usual the homily about actions mattering more than words is appropriate in some context, here it's apropo of nothing given that the overall discussion concerns the origin and implications of various criticisms). Modern antisemitism may indeed involve the cultural racial equation you describe but this doesn't demonstrate that either modern finance theory and early Jewish scripture, the criticisms of finance mentioned by parent, have any relation to modern antisemitism.
        asdflkj 17y ago
        I don't understand your question. Edit: I see that you've edited your post. _delirium's post had two things in it that are incorrect. It was highly rated, so many other people are presumably wrong in the same way. I pointed out why they're wrong. On most other topics, it wouldn't occur to anyone to object to my pointing out why some things are wrong, just because it wasn't apropo [sic] the origin of the thread. This is why I don't talk about this and a few other topics publicly unless I'm anonymous, and mostly even then. People just tell me to shut up, in so many words (and that's if I'm lucky).
  - jfager 17y ago
    Anti-semites link Jews to speculation, therefore all criticism of speculation is anti-semitic? Congratulations on the lamest troll I've ever seen on HN.
    - grandalf 17y ago
      The motives and moral decay historically attributed to Jews by anti-semites is the same as that currently attributed to speculators. Yes, finance is one area where Jews have historically had significant power and influence, and so the "anti-speculation" rhetoric is often wielded against them.
artsrc 17y ago
That article really misrepresents the issue in a serious way. It confuses what is necessary - taking risk, with what is reviled - extracting profit at the expense of others from the deficiencies of markets.

joe_the_user 17y ago

Hyman Minsky distinguishes three rough kind of finance: hedge, speculative and Ponzi. He argues that the movement of the economy towards speculative and then Ponzi finance is one of the motors of economic crisis. The implication is that a certain amount of regulation is useful here. ... and I don't think you can draw any lines between Minsky and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Indeed, "all criticism of speculation is anti-semitic" is as much a "conspiracy theory" as any other hot-button generalization.

artsrc 17y ago

Speculation is not always indistinguishable from hedging. If you have $100 in fixed rate debt, then a $100 fixed floating swap can be hedging. A $1,000 swap is speculating. Speculation sometimes has negative consequences for the economy. For example a few years ago oil prices were driven higher than they would otherwise be by speculation and this reduced GDP.