Burn The Speculators

Linsey McGoey: Marx is dead: don't resuscitate him | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Soros, together with market enthusiasts such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb, have long pointed out predatory behavior such as short-selling is not an aberration. It's the raison d'être of capitalism. "I call them crisis hunters," writes Taleb of those who profit from market volatility. "I am happy to be among them." Taleb wrote this in his bestselling Fooled by Randomness, a book that has become both a bible and an operating guide to many financiers and investors.

What's troubling about this is not the realisation that capitalists profit from speculating about – and therefore generating – the financial combustion of their competitors, but that this is striking so many people as shocking.

Let me get this straight, a financial failure can be created merely by making a bet? WTF?