by GIDEON GINRACHMANJINJa-VITUS, Alternate Reality News Service Economics Writer
Like a virulent microphage
The growth of electronic arbitrage
Takes trading to a whole new stage
In capitalism’s endless revolution
When trade programmes become logic obfuscating,
E-commerce becomes self-replicating
And code and life begin integrating
Poetry is the obvious devolution
– Buffetbot 12.7.2.4c
Who doesn’t want to be a poet? There’s so much to look forward to! The long hours. The non-existent pay. The social scorn. Oh, yes. Scorn. Harsh, critical, derision. Mean, petty nastiness. What poet hasn’t been taunted with, “Why can’t you become a successful economics reporter like your brother Barbara?” Thanks, mom. Thanks a lot!
Not that I, uhh, know this from – ahem – personal experience.
The last laugh may be among the poets, however, because many of the computer programmes that have been running the economy for the last dozen.3487 or so years have stopped outputting financially rewarding stock choices and started spewing poetry.
The programmes, known as quants, use complex algorithms to determine what the most lucrative play in the market will be at any given moment. In the past, their outputs consisted primarily of “buy,” “sell” and “put” orders, with the occasional “bill gates smells like a beached whale” Easter egg to keep human traders amused. Now, their outputs increasingly read like slush pile rejects from The Antigonish Review.
How could this happen? “No idea,” said Mustaffah “The Big Con” Siglieri, a former floor trader for JPMorganChase&Sanborn, who began teaching at the prestigious London School of Eugenomics when the bottom fell out of the floor market. “Trading programmes long ago became too complex for any human being to understand. I know some of my colleagues may find this heretical, but it may just be that the most extreme expression of economic activity is poetry!”
“Sure. Why not?” Phyllis Stein, host of the popular CNBC show Your Money, My Advice, stifled a sob. “That’s as good a theory as I’ve heard all five minutes!”
“Umm, yeah,” Siglieri sniffed. “Phyllis has great hair, and all, but she’s my colleague like a Peruvian rattle tortoise is a solid retirement savings plan!”
Stein looked like she was about to attempt to equate Peruvian rattle tortoises with solid retirement savings plans when she thought better of it and called the Department of Obscure Regulatory Undersight to see if there was any chance she could get her old job as a telephone land surveyor back.
Western stock markets are not the only ones to be affected by this outbreak of Erato. Rumour has it that a Chinese stock trading programme has developed concrete poetry tendencies. To refute this allegation, the government has executed a dozen Tibetan freedom activists. This, apparently, is China’s enlightened “Capitalism With a Human Bullet to the Back of the Head” policy in action.
Meanwhile, back in the known universe, efforts are underway to develop a computer programme that will understand what is happening to the existing quant programmes. “It’s all very exciting,” said Venezuelan bit wrangler and Micromoss consultant Moishe Moosemeat. “After five days, we stopped being able to tell what our new programme was doing. After 10 days, it started outputting macramé designs. When we finally get our programme to interact with the quant programmes, who knows what new frontiers in computing we will discover!”
“Poetry in easy to knit form?” Siglieri suggested. To tell the truth, he did not seem too impressed by the possibility.
At the moment, 57 per cent of quant programmes – almost half – have gone poet, leaving many companies with no way to make trades. How has this impacted the world economy? Surprisingly, not much. “The stock market had become so detached from the productive economy,” said actual, not at all made up Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, “that having it go poetry didn’t have much effect in the real world. Oh, sure, there was some panic when the first few quants attempted rhyming couplets – not only wasn’t it what they were programmed to do, but the rhymes were really awful – but once people realized that businesses still made things and they were still going to get paid, everybody calmed down pretty quickly.”
Black Moss Press has announced that it is currently in negotiations with many of the quant programmes to publish a volume of their poetry.
So, there, mom!
What the heck
Ameritech?
Why be such a jerk
Merck?
You’re acting awful silly
Eli Lilly.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
Alcoa!
I’ve got a bone to pick
With General Electric!
Your value system is broke
Coke!
You should be singing the blues
News!
Is there a problem
IBM?
Time to panic
General Dynamics?
You don’t impress me
Xe!
You’ll be stopped in your tracks
Goldman Sachs!
What was it all for?
– MakesMoney v12