Synopsis
'What’s fantastic about trading futures today: it’s so easy, push the button, buy the bean, I’m in the market, right?' says an analyst. Originally, the basic idea behind futures was that they serve to protect producers and consumers against fluctuations in the price of raw materials. In practice, futures are bets on a future price that are traded on commodity futures exchanges. Anybody can legally participate in the huge casino of the commodity futures markets in the hope of making real profits from an abstract contract based on a fictional premise. At the same time, like an invisible hand, futures determine the prices of real food. In Fictions and Futures #1, Gloria, the voice of the brokerage firm by the same name, introduces us to the language and logic of the financial world. In her words, and those of her handpicked guests, we find out what narratives fuel the markets, why the scarcity of raw materials is a reason to rejoice, and how an announced catastrophe can be used by special interests to lever an advantage.
