Integrated Man

Oil Prices: Blame it (and everything else) on the Algorithms

Those darned Algorithms! Turn your back and they'll raise unmitigated hell.  Take oil for example. CNBC on-line carries the article: "Algorithms, not demand, driving oil prices sky high?" 

My first question is: Why single out oil?  The equity markets seem to be on auto pilot as well.  Many reasonable analysts and economists without a stock to sell or an apparent axe to grind have argued that stocks are seriously inflated. The self-styled prophets of profits have ingeniously concocted a double barreled deceit, suggesting that:

-    oil prices are rising because of heightened market risks; but

-    stock prices are rising because they've already 'discounted the risks'.  That is, the stock market would be yet higher if not for those pesky energy risk scenarios in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Nigeria, Iraq, Japan, Australia,...

Beware the Avatar!

The following interesting piece happened across my screen this morning, courtesy of Forbes.com newsletter: "Should Artificial Intelligences be Granted Civil Rights?"  

At first thought, this seemed the logical extension of the Supreme Court's illogical extension of campaign funding privileges to corporations.  The next stop will be voting rights. And then came a whole flood of equally preposterous possibilities that spawn in the toxic political/cultural/social environment that provides our off-cable reality shows.