It's hard to look at a financial news site on Tuesday without running into a discussion about a recent BBC News interview with an independent trader named Alessio Rastani. The three-minute interview has apparently gone viral, with viewers perplexed that a person could say the things he said – so perplexed, in fact, that some observers are convinced the interview is a hoax.
It has even drawn comparisons to the outrageous 2005 fake interview orchestrated by hoaxsters The Yes Men, in which one Jude Finisterra, acting as a Dow Chemical representative, appeared on BBC World TV to announce that the company was taking full responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal disaster, compensating victims and cleaning up the mess.
There is already some evidence to suggest that the Rastani interview is not a hoax, including an official statement from the BBC, a follow-up interview by Forbes and a little profile by The Telegraph. But what's particularly interesting is that the interview grabbed so much attention in the first place. After all, while Mr. Rastani makes a bearish case for the global economy, his comments are hardly out of the ordinary.
Felix Salmon puts it this way: "It's a common misconception that all traders are die-hard capitalists. But in fact many of them are quite the opposite. They still want to make money, of course. But that doesn't mean they want the stock market to go up."
Meanwhile, Kid Dynamite picks apart several of Mr. Rastani's points – including that the markets are ruled by fear; the smart money are moving their cash into safer assets; he goes where the money-making opportunities are; he dreams of another recession; and the economic crisis is like a cancer, in that it won't go away if we ignore it – and finds that they're, well, completely reasonable.
"Is our mainstream media so used to bullish talking heads – mutual fund managers talking their books and their careers – that anytime someone injects a dose of reality into a conversation, it becomes newsworthy?" the blogger asks.
More than newsworthy, it becomes outrageous.