High-frequency trading considered harmful

> That's complete BS and you know it. The real economy needs liquidity but not measured in thousands of transactions per second.

Liquidity is only needed if you want to use the markets as a gambling den. I hesitate to use the word "properly", but if you're using the markets to store your savings (like pensions, etc) the LAST thing you want is liquidity, and its friend volatility.

You want stodgy, old-fashioned, income stocks that just generate a steady stream of money, and the value of the stocks themselves be damned.

The problem with liquidity, and all this trading, and all that crap, is that stodgy, old-fashioned income stocks become the target of speculation, get taken over by vultures, stripped and the carcasses are left to collapse. All that survives is the name, which gets bought by a company with a far saner market structure (the Swiss come to mind, as do the Chinese), and all we get left with from what was a fine old Anglo-American company is a bunch of rich oligarchs, a load of pension funds in critical care because the company no longer exists, and a load of ex employees with no job and no pension.

And I hate to say it, but when you look at the news coming out of America with Democrats and Republicans talking past each other without hearing, when you look at what's happening over here with middle-class professions like nurses going on strike because they can't afford to live, I think democracy itself could be in serious trouble in the not-too-distant future if we don't do something fast. And a tipping-point climate shock could very easily bring the western house of cards crashing down. Oh well. I think the world, and humanity in small part, will have no trouble surviving. It's just that if Western Civilisation doesn't, most of us in said "Civilisation", won't survive either ...

Cheers,
Wol