Financial Phrases to Beware Of, Part LXXII

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Here is Mike Konczal reading my mind today:

Like “providing liquidity,” whenever I hear “competitive disadvantage” as the main reason to not do a sensible financial regulatory related thing I think that there’s some real shenanigans going on.

Obviously he’s right about the “competitive disadvantage” shibboleth, but it’s the other one I really have in mind. It’s everyone’s go-to excuse for why some arcane bit of financial rocket science is really a good thing: because it “provides liquidity” to the market. Whenever I hear that I reach for my wallet.

Example: if you ask Goldman Sachs about the value of high-frequency trading, in which they co-locate their servers near a stock exchange’s servers so they can complete trades in 3 milliseconds instead of the pokier 10 milliseconds required by the dinosaur brokers that you and I have to use, they’ll tell you that HFT provides needed liquidity. There are, at a minimum, two problems with that. First: does anyone really think that U.S. stock markets have historically suffered from a lack of liquidity? Stop laughing back there. But you’re right: the answer isn’t just no, it’s hell no. In fact, U.S. equity markets are generally used as textbook examples of the most open, liquid markets ever created on planet Earth.

Second: financial rocket science does often provide additional liquidity. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always provide additional liquidity. Typically, it provides liquidity when you don’t need it and then scurries away and hides in a corner precisely when you do. Unless there’s some underlying reason — or, better yet, some regulation — that gives you a reason to believe that a financial innovation will provide liquidity all the time, even when the market panics, it’s useless.

End of rant. You may now go back about your business.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate