Zero Hedge

{{bronze}}{{conspiracynav|1}}{{economics}}
'''Zero Hedge''' is a batshit insane [[Austrian school]] finance blog run by two pseudonymous founders who post articles under the name "Tyler Durden," after the character from ''[[Fight Club]]''. It's essentially [[List of predictions of the end of the world|apocalypse porn]]. It has accurately predicted 200 of the last 2 [[recession]]s.{{nofact}}

Tyler claims to be a "believer in a [[International Jewish conspiracy|sweeping conspiracy]] that casts the alumni of [[Goldman Sachs]] as a [[Zionist Occupation Government|powerful cabal]] at the helm of [[U.S.]] policy, with the Treasury and the [[Federal Reserve]] colluding to preserve the ''status quo''." While this is not an ''entirely'' unreasonable statement of the problem,<ref>{{wpa|Goldman Sachs controversies}}</ref> his solution actually mirrors the antagonist in ''Fight Club'': Tyler ''wants'', per Austrian school ideas, to lead a [[Great Depression|catastrophic market crash]] in order to destroy banking institutions and bring back [[Anarcho-capitalism|"real" free market capitalism]].<ref>[http://nymag.com/guides/money/2009/59457/ The Dow Zero Insurgency], ''New York Magazine''</ref>

The site posts nearly indecipherable analyses of multiple seemingly unrelated subjects to point towards a [[Peter Schiff|consistent theme of economic collapse any day now]]. Tyler seems to repeat [[The Economic Collapse Blog]]'s idea of posting blog articles [[Argumentum ad nauseam|many times a day]] and encouraging people to post it as far and wide as humanly possible. Tyler moves away from the format of long lists to write insanely dense volumes{{efn|Some essays are more than 3,000 words each, plus graphs<ref>[http://www.zerohedge.com/article/so-much-john-burbank-turning-bearish-gold "So Much For John Burbank Turning Bearish On Gold"]</ref>}} filled with (often contradicting) [[jargon]] that makes one wonder if the writers even [[Not even wrong|know what the words actually mean]].<ref>[http://www.zerohedge.com/article/head-eurogroup-admits-lying-about-secret-greek-meeting-out-fears-market-collapse "Head Of Eurogroup Admits To Lying About 'Secret Greek Meeting' Out Of Fears For Market Collapse - 'When It Becomes Serious, You Have To Lie'"]</ref> The site first appeared in early 2009, meaning that (given Tyler's habit of taking a shit on each and every positive data point), anyone listening to him from the beginning missed the entire 2009-2020 rally in the equities market. 

The only writer conclusively identified is {{wpl|Daniel Ivandjiiski||,}} who conducts public interviews on behalf of Zero Hedge.<ref>[http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/item_hn6OGbJ7XLE5BXvLDLA2oK Bio from the ''NY Post'', with one of the least original article names ever]</ref> The blog came online several days after he lost his job at Wexford Capital, a [[Connecticut]]-based hedge fund (run by a former Goldman trader). Later Colin Lokey joined Zero Hedge's writing team in 2015 and left in April 2016 publishing an article identifying the writing team as Dan Ivandjiiski, Tim Backshall, and himself. This is quite a bit less than the 40 or so writers Ivandjiiski claimed to be on staff in earlier years. Note that they chose the pen name from a nihilistic psychotic [[delusion]].

Zero Hedge is not ''quite'' the [[NaturalNews]] of [[economics]], but not for want of trying. The Hamilton 68 Project notes an enduring popularity of the site among [[Putin]]Bot [[Twitter]] accounts.<ref>[http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org Hamilton 68]</ref>

==Actually doing ''some'' good==
Zero Hedge came to public notoriety when it brought to light the number of high frequency [[computer]] trades (flash trades) conducted by Goldman Sachs in Tyler's more [[Stopped clock|condensed and coherent]] analyses. Goldman Sachs used this data as a form of arbitrage to make a profit off penny differences in bid/ask prices. This was picked up by ''Bloomberg'' for a piece called "Goldman Sachs Loses Grip on Its Doomsday Machine" by Jonathan Weil.<ref>[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFeyqdzYcizc The article]</ref> This caused the SEC to change weekly financial reporting and propose to ban flash trading altogether.

With Zero Hedge receiving more attention from the [[mainstream media]], [[Matt Taibbi]] decided to interview and publish the resulting story about Goldman Sachs in ''Rolling Stone''.<ref>[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405 The Great American Bubble Machine] and [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216 Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?]</ref> There he [[snark]]ily stated that Goldman is controlling and manipulating everything in order to make [[money]]:
{{cquote|From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the [[Great Depression]] — and they're about to do it again.|||Matt Taibbi}}

Zero Hedge later earned what started as a severe mocking by CNBC analyst Dennis Kneale,<ref>[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CEUQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwallstcheatsheet.com%2Feconomy%2Ffight-club-zerohedge-v-cnbc-round-one.html&ei=jp7JTajhEpTRiALd_JGEBQ&usg=AFQjCNFU3-j9rxIGm1g_YJPcEGJwrHP8AA&sig2=A7h8be0sBophsUc7I_-OJw Fight Club: ZeroHedge v. CNBC - Round One]</ref><ref>[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CEsQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwallstcheatsheet.com%2Feconomy%2Ffight-club-zerohedge-v-cnbc-round-2.html&ei=jp7JTajhEpTRiALd_JGEBQ&usg=AFQjCNHEF0gwweFVO7Sf2HinjxMbzFnN_Q&sig2=ps_dyCbGl4nXUR-Scdegiw Fight Club: ZeroHedge v. CNBC - Round Two]</ref> and turned into a mocking rant by Kneale "calling top indie finance blogs such as Zero Hedge a bunch of idiots who [[Argumentum ad cellarium|live in their mothers’ basements]]" when Zero Hedge refused to show up. Zero Hedge championed it as an [[Danth's Law|absolute victory]], including a temporary drop in CNBC's viewership<ref>[http://www.zerohedge.com/article/cnbc-viewership-plunges-50-october "CNBC Viewership Plunges 50% In October"]</ref> and 
forcing Kneale out of CNBC
 Kneale accepting a position at [[Fox Business Network|Fox Business]].<ref>[http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/dennis-kneale-leaving-cnbc-for-fox-business-network_b35543#more-35543 Dennis Kneale to Join Fox Business Network]</ref>

==Accusations of plagiarism==
Tyler has a habit of [[Plagiarism|taking other people's research]], sometimes adding a slant to it of economic doom if it isn't there already, and posting it on Zero Hedge.<ref>[http://www.zerohedge.com/article/things-make-you-go-hmmmm-where-theres-smoke-theres-fire "Things That Make You Go Hmmmm - Where There's Smoke There's Fire"]</ref> This included a series of reports leaked from Merrill Lynch's chief [[economist]] David Rosenberg.<ref>[http://wallstreetpit.com/4279-merrill-lynch-muzzling-zero-hedge-and-rosenberg "Merrill Lynch – Muzzling Zero Hedge and Rosenberg"]</ref> [[Lawyer]]s were sent with takedown notices, and were not moved by his [[Persecution complex|claims of censorship]] about publishing their [[copyright]]ed documents. Morgan Stanley had the same issue later, and is considering legal action in addition to demanding the material be taken down.<ref>[http://www.businessinsider.com/report-morgan-stanley-looking-into-legal-action-against-zerohedge-2010-1 Morgan Stanley May Sue Zero Hedge For Publishing Their Research As Its Own], ''Business Insider''</ref>

==About the authors==
Ivandjiiski's history is a little odd, since he moved to the United States from [[Bulgaria]] to study at the University of [[Pennsylvania]] in order to pursue [[molecular biology]] (then go on to [[Medicine|med]] school). Instead, he took a job as a junior investment banker at Jefferies & Company in Los Angeles, and continued in finance. It is interesting to note that in 2005, while working for Miller Buckfire, he was barred from working in the broker-dealer business due to insider trading amounting to $780.

Dan denies that he founded the site, but he claims no other profession and to be the primary author of a number of the articles. He claims he writes with a staff of up to 40 other writers that work for Zero Hedge. However, secrecy is paramount in case ''[[They]]'' find out.

"Creative" [[journalism]] is apparently not out of place in the Ivandjiiski family either. His father {{wpl|Krassimir Ivandjiiski}} runs a [[crank]]y [[tabloid]] called ''Bulgaria Confidential'', which received brief notoriety in the US after publishing a story about massive [[drug]] trafficking and corruption in [[Montana]], picked up by an independent US rag ''Free Speech Newspaper''.<ref>[http://www.copi.com/articles/Montana/980317c.html "Drugs Are Trafficked From Canada to the US"]</ref> There, Krassimir and ''Free Speech'' [[PIDOOMA|claimed]] that the governor was an [[alcohol]]ic drug abuser who helped turn his [[state]] into one of the pits of drug trafficking in the US.<ref>[http://www.constitution.org/mil/mt/racic3.htm Reply to Governor Marc Racicot by ''Free Speech'']</ref> The governor fired off complaints about slander, while many wondered why a state with barely a million people<ref>[http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/30 1,032,949] as of 2015</ref> and only a small handful of highways, hundreds of miles from any major population center, could have more drug runners than the West Coast.{{efn|Not really wonder, Krassimir obviously doesn't know shit about Montana. I-5, stretching from Seattle to San Diego, is a very notorious trafficking area, one that is an easy straight shot up and down the West Coast through a number of massive cities filled with millions of people, ultimately ending at the Canadian and Mexican borders.}}

A telling article was written in 2016 about the blog's operations after a falling out between Colin Lokey and the 
forty
 two other authors at the blog.<ref>[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-29/unmasking-the-men-behind-zero-hedge-wall-street-s-renegade-blog Bloomberg Markets - Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge, Wall Street's Renegade Blog]</ref> The article included private chat logs between the authors emphasizing punishing 24/7 deadlines and an overwhelming profit motive to support the authors' extravagant lifestyles, which conflicted with the image of their anti-establishment, anti-[[capitalist]] icon Tyler Durden. To quote Lokey, "[t]wo guys who live a lifestyle you only dream of are pretending to speak for you." Lokey's resignation was also rather telling about the site's bias in heavily cheerleading for [[authoritarian]], [[autocratic]] governments with terrible [[civil rights]] and [[human rights]] records and against freer, [[democratic]] societies:
<blockquote>"I can’t be a 24-hour cheerleader for [[Hezbollah]], [[Russia|Moscow]], [[Iran|Tehran]], [[People's Republic of China|Beijing]], and [[Donald Trump|Trump]] anymore. It’s wrong. Period. I know it gets you views now, but it will kill your brand over the long run," Lokey texted Ivandjiiski. "This isn’t a [[revolution]]. It’s a joke."</blockquote>

==Allegations of "pump and dump" involvement==
{{main|Pump and dump}}
[[Ironic]]ally, Zero Hedge has itself been accused of some of the manipulation it claims to expose. A company called Noble Investments Limited claims that a financial consultant paid Zero Hedge and a nut from ''[[Forbes]]'' to write a defamatory blog post about the company, which he then linked to immediately.

{{cquote|Accordingly, just fourteen minutes after the Dalrymple GFC Reptort was published on zerohedge.com, Weinberg published a fully formed blog entry, including pictures, in which he summarized and quoted from the report, and provided readers a link to Ivandjiiski’s blog entry on zerohedge.com where they could download the report. Weinberg did not acknowledge that zerohedge.com had "broken" the story fourteen minutes earlier or state anywhere in the blog that the link from which readers were invited to download the report pointed to Ivandjiiski’s blog entry on zerohedge.com.<ref>[http://ww.gross-law.com/sg_userfiles/Noble_v_Dalrymple_Complaint.pdf ''Noble Investments Limited v. Dalrymple Finance LLC'']</ref>}}

The law firm behind the suit describes Zero Hedge as "a portal for people to anonymously distribute derogatory information concerning public companies", giving the impression that Zero Hedge may well have arranged many such pay-to-defame schemes.

==Devolution into just another shitty [[wingnut]] site==
As of June 2020, Zero Hedge has placed a significantly increased amount of effort on amplifying [[right-wing]] [[conspiracy theories]] and other far-right [[political]] news well beyond their original mostly economic scope. A sampling of the site on June 16, 2020, for instance, shows negative stories on the {{wpl|Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone}}, [[Ron Paul]] calling worries about a "second wave" of [[COVID-19]] in the United States a "hoax",{{efn|Ironically just above a story where {{wpl|Beijing||,}} [[China]] was increasing lockdowns due to a second wave happening there.<ref>[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-coronavirus-cases-beijing-second-wave-surge-covid-19-infections-latest-news-today-2020-06-16/ "China races to contain a second wave of coronavirus cases in Beijing"] by Ramy Inocencio, CBS News, 2020 June 16</ref>}} a nonsensical story trying to rewrite the narrative on the {{wpl|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|Russian hacking of Democratic documents|,}} and a story by [[Pat Buchanan]] who apparently thinks flying the 
traitor battle flag
 [[Confederate flag]] is a [[Irony|great way of showing your love]] for the [[United States of America]].<ref>[http://archive.is/rj7At Zero Hedge front page], J2020 June 16, archived on 2020 Jun 17 02:34:59 UTC</ref> 

Zero Hedge is widely considered ideologically friendly with [[Russia]],<ref>[https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2200/RR2237/RAND_RR2237.pdf "Russian Social Media Influence: Understanding Russian Propaganda in Eastern Europe] by Todd C. Helmus, Elizabeth Bodine-Baron, Andrew Radin, Madeline Magnuson, Joshua Mendelsohn, William Marcellino, Andriy Bega, Zev Winkelman, Rand Corporation, 2018</ref> to the point where US intelligence officials have on occasion felt the need warn US presidents about Zero Hedge's role in amplifying Kremlin [[propaganda]].<ref>[https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-coronavirus-pandemic-health-moscow-media-ff4a56b7b08bcdc6adaf02313a85edd9 "US accuses financial website of spreading Russian propaganda"] by Nomaan Merchant, AP News, 2022 February 15</ref> Thus the non-economic content can be seen as a sympathetic regurgitation of content and ideology that might be on [[Russia Today]]. Right wing conspiracy [[bullshit]] is, of course, very profitable.<ref>[https://newrepublic.com/article/156788/zero-hedge-russian-trojan-horse "Is Zero Hedge a Russian Trojan Horse?"] by Seth Hettena, New Republic, 2020 March 9</ref>, so there is also a good "business case" for the shift in site tone… unless you take it too far.

In February 2020, Zero Hedge got banned from Twitter for making false claims about the [[2019-20 COVID-19 outbreak]], and for [[dox]]xing the Chinese scientist about whom they made the false claims.<ref>[https://www.zdnet.com/article/zerohedge-banned-from-twitter-over-coronavirus-bioweapon-claims/ ZeroHedge banned from Twitter over coronavirus bioweapon claims: The financial news website came under fire for doxxing a Chinese scientist accused of being behind the virus.] by Charlie Osborne (February 3, 2020 — 11:32 GMT) ''ZDNet''.</ref> However, the ban was lifted after further appeal.<ref>[https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-restores-zero-hedge-account-053002525.html "Twitter Restores Zero Hedge Account After Admitting Error"] by Siraj Datoo, Bloomberg, 2020 June 13</ref>

On June 16, 2020, [[Google]] likewise had enough of the [[bullshit]] on Zero Hedge and banned the site from making money off of its platform, at least for now.<ref>[https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/tech/google-federalist-zerohedge-advertising-ban/index.html "Google kicked ZeroHedge off its ad platform and warned the Federalist"] by Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business, 2020 June 16</ref> Basically, catering to the conspiracy crowd resulted in a ''user commentary section'' that was simply too toxic for Google to run advertisements against. Zero Hedge revealed on June 17, 2020 that {{wpl|Paypal}} dropped Zero Hedge for the same reason.<ref>[http://archive.is/LlX5C Zero Hedge Status Update,] 2020 June 17</ref>

Zero Hedge was deprecated as a Wikipedia source (should not be used as a source for anything) on 19 June 2020, due to its propagation of conspiracy theories and false or misleading information.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_302#RfC:_Zero_Hedge</ref>

Followers of finance will still often read Zero Hedge, but the pickings are slimmer and slimmer.

==See also==
*[[Debt Slavery]]
*[[Melt Up]]
*[[Sound money]]
*[[Usury]]
*[[Stansberry and Associates]]

==External links==
*[http://www.zerohedge.com/ Main page]
:*[http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/ Old address]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Austrian school]]
[[Category:Clogosphere]]
[[Category:COVID-19 denialists]]
[[Category:Doxers]]
[[Category:Economics]]
[[Category:Fake news]]
[[Category:Financial crisis of 2007 to 2009]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Internet kooks]]
[[Category:Libertarianism]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Plagiarists]]
[[Category:Vatniks]]
[[Category:Webshites]]

Categories: Austrian school, Clogosphere, COVID-19 denialists, Doxers, Economics, Fake news, Financial crisis of 2007 to 2009, Internet, Internet kooks, Libertarianism, Living people, Plagiarists, Vatniks, Webshites