Italian Minister: Cocaine responsible for Market Volatility

From the Guardian (bold highlights mine)

First it was the hedge funds, then the ratings agencies. Now, a member of Silvio Berlusconi's government has pointed to a different reason for the world financial turmoil. The problem — or one of them — is cocaine. And to tackle it, Carlo Giovanardi, a junior minister with responsibility for the family, said he intended introducing drug tests for securities traders on the Milan Borsa. Speaking in a YouTube interview, he said the drug is one of the causes of fluctuations on the stock exchange and "an alarm that needs to be listened to". The minister said testing traders to see if they had been snorting the odd line was part of a wider project for checks on pilots, professional drivers, public officials, surgeons and police officers. "The idea of giving drug tests to people with great responsibility is absolutely acceptable," he said. "I rather doubt that an investor would entrust his or her savings to an alcoholic. And the same thing holds good for cocaine."

I don’t know about the rest, but as a 'trader', I frequent beer and has never touched or used cocaine. So I am not party to the accusation of so called cocaine driven market epileptic seizures.

Yet I don’t see any of my beer stupors as having to affect my market positions. I guess anyone exposed in the financial markets would be risking real money enough to sensibly make economic calculations as major part of their decisions or actions--even if such action would represent as miscalculations for one reason or another.

Besides, volatile markets as I have been repeating are manifestations of boom bust policies meant to preserve the current political order.

Funny how politicians are finding fault on everyone and everything else except themselves.

First, this demonstrates utter ignorance of the market process. Second, such is a symptom of desperation. And lastly, this also signifies the innate desire by politicians to use more political power to control people's actions--political greed--which is actually the source of all the volatilities

How imbecilic.