Interrogating the Algorithm: Debt, Derivatives and the Social Reconstruction of Stock Market Trading

Abstract

This article examines the rise of algorithmic trading and the invention of new financial instruments, their implications and effects. It politicizes and denaturalizes the technological ‘innovations’ that have created networks of control over groups that states and corporations have designated as threatening, then examines how such ‘innovations’ have transformed stock market trading from a geographically-fixed, paper-based institution to a high-speed electronic casino. Finally, it discusses how and why financial actors have amassed the social, economic and political power that allows them to engage in practices that cause immense social harm while remaining virtually untouched by state regulatory agencies, civil and criminal law.