Men And Or Machines

Today was to be a day when I would put aside pessimism and take an optimistic view of the future.

It did not last long when I renewed an insurance and had to suffer the automated diatribes and nattering of the firm I phoned.  It is because everything, or almost, is on computers and they are opponents who do not take prisoners.

This article about finance is from Naked Capitalism, linked from Tax Justice Network and by Nicholas Shaxon, the author of "Treasure Islands" the award winning graphic tale of where the money goes, who sends it there and how they benefit.

Headed "Why Tax Havens Will Be At The Heart Of The Next Financial Crisis" it says that when the next bust comes it will the tax havens that might be the main agency for its world wide transmittal.

An essential reason for this is quite simple.  It is that to secure the best deals in confidence and fast, vast sums are batted about the world between high performance computers working 24/7.

Some of the main entities engaged in this are laughingly called "Trust Funds".  They are also playing games in currency, commodity and derivative trading with huge toxic amounts of debt money  on high leverage borrowing on the asset basis of the money being zoomed around.

Then to see this about the digital capability of the now, never mind the future, that says that the machines and their digital works are bigger, better and a whole last faster than the poor, blinking, sad humans that are supposed to control them is not good news.

When the histories of all this come to be written, who will do the writing?  It may not be the humans; it may be the machines who will have their own agenda.  So what will they say?

It was all down to human error?