>Do investment strategies really have a fractal structure?
*Scientific American* February 1999, "A Multifractal Walk down Wall Street." *The geometry that describes the shape of coastlines and the patterns of galaxies also elucidates how stock prices soar and plummet, by Benoit B. Mandelbrot* (Take a simple "trend line," such as-- up moderately, then down for about half as long, then up sharply. The fractal is just overlays of this simple trend line onto itself. The more instances the fractal is interpolated, the more it starts to resemble market price oscillations.)
>Evidence indicates that the attacks that triggered the Asian
>meltdown were rather well planned. That takes one hell of a lot of
>computing to accomplish.
Peter Gowan discusses this event in *The Global Gamble*. He doesn't ascribe much of a role to computers. It's easy to get hyped up on techno and forget that it's still about big strategies and big money.
Gowan, page 128: There is, as yet, no conclusive evidence that the Clinton administration acted strategically from 1995 to use the dollar price rise, pressure to dismantle controls on the capital account, inflows of hot money and financial warfare by the US hedge funds to bring countries in East and South-East Asia to their knees. There is much circumstantial evidence to suggest strategic planning. But the question remains open. What is not in doubt is that once the hedge funds had struck, the US Treasury launched a dramatic assault against the social relations of production in South Korea with the aim of achieving a *Gleichschaltung* of Korean assets and US capitalism.*** (conjoining)
So the question is when financial policy was still proceeding "naturally," and when did US officials begin to smell blood and make conscious their attack on East and SE Asia. If the dollar price hike of '95 was the first sign of the attack, then it went on for two years before the prey went down (though S. Korea escaped mostly unharmed when it threatened default, Rubin got the fear of God in him, and the IMF made an about-face and let them keep their economy.)
>So how come those kinds of issues never come up in
>WSJ or NYT articles?
Reality is property.
TD