Late on Monday morning, Alessio Rastani, a stock trader, stunned viewers (and subsequent YouTube users when the video got uploaded yesterday afternoon) on BBC News 24 by saying that the Eurozone will crash in the next year and that bankers and traders like himself are waiting to make money from it:
This problem cannot be solved. I’m fairly confident that the Euro is going to crash, and it’s going to fall pretty hard.
The depression in the 30′s wasn’t just about a market crash. There were some people who were prepared to make money from that crash. I think anybody can do that. The governments don’t rule the world. Goldman Sachs rules the world. Goldman Sachs does not care about this rescue package.
I got to bed every night, I dream of another recession. I dream of another moment like this.
He even had a message for viewers, because he’s that kind:
Prepare yourselves, because things are just going to get worse and if you plan ahead, you can make big money. Look into hedging strategies and treasury bonds. In less than 12 months, my prediction is the savings of millions of people are going to vanish, and this is just the beginning. So I would say be prepared and act now.
It’s quite an astonishing series of quotes. Martine Croxall, who was interviewing Rastani, looked shell-shocked and said that jaws had dropped in the studio (I actually found it cruel of them not to prove the point and point the camera towards crew members with hands on their hands or over their wide-open mouths). The internet, as it often does, went crazy. It was the talk of Twitter for a good few hours and even the Spanish Finance Minister Elena Salgado, who is already under enough pressure as it is, expressed his anger about Rastani’s views on national television:
It seems immoral to me, immoral, amoral.
So, anyway, many views on YouTube later people are now debating whether or not that Rastani conforms too much to the ‘evil banker’ stereotype (if you don’t know what that stereotype is, listen to The Complete Banker by The Divine Comedy and you’ll get the general idea). He only trades his own money and is not a professional trader, which does make you question why the BBC thought he was an authoritative voice on the matter. One of the more popular theories was that he is part of the Yes Men, a U.S.-based protest group, who have already fooled the BBC back in 2004 by having an imposter claim that Dow Chemical would compensate victims after the Bhopal disaster.
However, the Yes Men have denied that Rastani is part of their group and the man himself has said to Forbes that he is genuine and he not part of any hoax. The BBC, meanwhile, have also claimed that he is real after carrying out ‘detailed investigations’. A spokesman told AFP:
He is an independent market trader and one of a range of voices we’ve had on air to talk about the recession.
So if he’s real we should really be asking another question – is the media once again not telling us all the information that we should know before everything goes belly up or is this a lone ranger over-exaggerating what’s going on in the financial world? It’s too early to say and, to be honest, it could well be a bit of both.
After the financial meltdown of 2008 American news media like CNBC were criticised for not being aware of what was going to happen and believing the lies of corporations – most notably by Jon Stewart who famously made CNBC host Jim Cramer squirm in his seat on The Daily Show in March 2009 – and not challenging what they are saying. Is the same thing happening again? Are journalists not being as tough as they should be?
Of course, this all depends on whether or not other more authoritative figures agree with Rastani’s judgement. What should happen now is that journalists should be looking to more senior figures and asking in all honesty whether or not his claims stack up and, if that doesn’t work, researching and fact-finding. There is simply no excuse not to do this, especially with the rise of data journalism.
Alessio Rastani’s quotes may not be instant cause for concern it reinforces the message that viewers should at least be told the truth of what’s going on rather than tip-toeing around it.
