What has become of our markets? Nanex, the market analysis firm, has animated a half second of trading activity in Johnson & Johnson stock. The animation is both intoxicating and mindblowing, not only because of the sheer quantity of trades, each of which is made by computer algorithms (i.e. without human intervention) in such a miniscule timespan, but also because of the tremendous scope that high-frequency trading creates for what Nanex calls “abusive behaviour” — including arbitrage and market manipulation — and systemic risk.

One of the puzzles of the global financial crisis has been that there has been no push for debt to equity swaps. In previous crises, most notably the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, arguably the beginning of the modern era of hyper usury and financial debauch from globalising Western banks, the situation was solved by at least the appearance of debt for equity swaps. The obvious difference being that with equity the risk lies with the creator of the funds and with debt the risk lies with the recipient of the funds. When there is a risk to the whole system, this is a way to reduce the overall peril.

I wonder as we look to Cypriot savers taking a “haircut”, if we are seeing the shape of what will happen in the next crisis. The essence of a debt for equity swap is that the obligation that goes with debt is taken away. Calling the confiscation of bank deposits equity instead of theft would be a way to prettify the actions of the hyper-usurers. Michel Chossudovsky thinks that Cypress is a dress rehearsal  for things to come. A “savings heist” in European and American banks deemed too big to fail.