what did you learn today?
Hegel draws a distinction between man’s relation to the world and animals’ relation to the world as two different forms of eating. Animals have a negative relation to the object because they simply swallow it. Human negativity, however, is reflected: man does not in fact devour the object, but rather incorporates it abstractly, and thereby creates the inner space that is the subject. It is a variation on the old humanist song and dance.
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I have become increasingly interested in the philosophical border between man and animal, which also becomes an examination of the traditional boundary between culture and nature. I have chosen to tackle this issue via the thinkers who seem to have questioned the self-sufficiency of humanism most deeply: Heidegger and Lévinas. Despite their critique of a traditional concept of the subject, they remain humanists by insisting on an absolute distinction between humans and animals. The establishment of man’s privileged position requires the sacrifice and devouring of animals. Not even Lévinas is willing to sacrifice the sacrifice....The biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applies to humans, but leaves out animals. Our culture rests on a structure of sacrifice. We are all mixed up in an eating of flesh—real or symbolic. - J.D.
The May 6, 2010, Flash Crash[1] also known as The Crash of 2:45, the 2010 Flash Crash or simply the Flash Crash, was a United States trillion-dollar[2] stock market crash, which started at 2:32 p.m. EDT and lasted for approximately 36 minutes.[3]:1 Stock indexes, such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite, collapsed and rebounded very rapidly.[3] The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its biggest intraday point drop (from the opening) up to that point,[3] plunging 998.5 points (about 9%), most within minutes, only to recover a large part of the loss.[4][5] It was also the second-largest intraday point swing(difference between intraday high and intraday low) up to that point, at 1,010.14 points.[3][4][6][7] The prices of stocks, stock index futures, options and exchange-traded fund (ETFs) were volatile, thus trading volume spiked.[3]:3 A CFTC 2014 report described it as one of the most turbulent periods in the history of financial markets.[3]:1
According to a December 6, 2015 article in the Wall Street Journal, new regulations put in place following the 2010 Flash Crash—when "bids on dozens of ETFs (and other stocks) fell as low as a penny a share[8]—proved to be inadequate to protect investors in the August 24, 2015 flash crash, "when the price of many ETFs appeared to come unhinged from their underlying value."—ETFs were put under greater scrutiny by regulators and investors.[8] Analysts at Morningstar claim that,[8]
On April 21, 2015, nearly five years after the incident, the U.S. Department of Justice laid "22 criminal counts, including fraud and market manipulation" [9] against Navinder Singh Sarao, a trader. Among the charges included was the use of spoofing algorithms; just prior to the Flash Crash, he placed thousands of E-mini S&P 500 stock index futures contracts which he planned on canceling later.[9] These orders amounting to about "$200 million worth of bets that the market would fall" were "replaced or modified 19,000 times" before they were canceled.[9] Spoofing, layering, and front running are now banned.[2]
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigation concluded that Sarao "was at least significantly responsible for the order imbalances" in the derivatives market which affected stock markets and exacerbated the flash crash.[9] Sarao began his alleged market manipulation in 2009 with commercially available trading software whose code he modified "so he could rapidly place and cancel orders automatically."[9] Traders Magazine journalist, John Bates, argued that blaming a 36-year-old small-time trader who worked from his parents' modest stucco house in suburban west London[9] for sparking a trillion-dollar stock market crash is a little bit like blaming lightning for starting a fire" and that the investigation was lengthened because regulators used "bicycles to try and catch Ferraris." Furthermore, he concluded that by April 2015, traders can still manipulate and impact markets in spite of regulators and banks' new, improved monitoring of automated trade systems.[2]
As recently as May 2014, a CFTC report concluded that high-frequency traders "did not cause the Flash Crash, but contributed to it by demanding immediacy ahead of other market participants."[3]:1