Edward Chancellor: A History of Financial Speculation
If that's the case, speculators are far from being a plague on the markets. Instead, they help reduce risk by taking on the other side of popular trades, resisting the herd mentality that creates bubbles in the first place.
The speculator "loves freedom, detests cant and abhors restrictions," Edward Chancellor wrote in his 1999 book, "Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation."
According to Mr. Chancellor, a financial strategist in Boston, speculators aren't motivated by greed, after all. Instead, idealism fuels their trades.
"The essence of speculation remains a utopian yearning for freedom and equality which counterbalances the drab rationalistic materialism of the modern economic system with its inevitable inequalities of wealth," he argued in his book.
WEEK IN REVIEW
Those Wall Street Gamblers Might Not Be Bad After All
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Published: March 19, 2010
When bubbles burst, speculators often get the blame. But maybe they were telling us something we didn't want to hear.