Michael Blastland
speaker
745 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2011
last heard Aug 2011
Michael Blastland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Last week we left the gods of the Acropolis, the idea of economics as morality, and looked towards the Agora, the market.
This week we begin on the trading floor of a financial market at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
What you hear behind me is the open outcry, as it's called, of people buying, selling, haggling.
There's a riot of colour, voices, the litter of forgotten trades in scraps on the floor.
Across the walls there are prices, flashing red, green, orange.
The pit, they call the business end of all this.
Think fish market, think flower market, think cattle auction all rolled into one.
A ruthless, fizzing machine of amazing complexity.
From economic gods, this programme turns to the economic cogs of the market.
In the gallery overlooking the pit, we bump into Phil Flynn, a trader and Fox News pundit.
Some people hate markets.
Phil loves them, really loves them.
Hug a speculator?
Maybe another day.
open outcry is dying.
These days, most of the action is on computer screens, a move led by Leo Malamed.
He's a former chairman of the Chicago Merc, almost 80, and a legend in this city of traders.
Leo loves the market too, which is just as well, as it has a tendency, he says, to get its way.
You can't buck the market, as Mrs Thatcher put it.
A force of nature, more than one Chicago economist has said.
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