Using Words to Move Stock Numbers

Those who would game the system to advance their own economic market interests have been hard at work on the Internet. Ever get spam touting stocks? Ever wonder if anyone would believe the hyperbolic emails? Apparently they do. According to the Washington Post, the SEC is accusing two Texas men of cheating investors in at least a baker's dozen small cap stocks of $4.6 million by infecting PCs with viruses and using them as sources of spam emails. People who took the bait drove up prices long enough to let the men sell their holdings.

And in Russia, News.com.au notes that hackers issues a false statement announcing the arrest of the CEO of one of the country's main oil producers. The CEO must have been happy on one hand about the inaccuracy, but unhappy that the stock price fell, albeit by less than 1 percent.

This isn't a new type of activity on the Internet. Stock chat rooms used to be one of the main stomping grounds of they who would induce changes in stock prices. It's fascinating how the mere act of telling people what they would like to hear causes them to take specific actions, like spending their money, even though the source of the advice is highly suspect. That shows the stories that have the most power are actually not the ones others tell us, but the ones we tell ourselves. It's not the words on the screen, but the words in the head that tell us what we'd like to believe - that up is down and that we can have something for nothing just by asking.

High School Student Removed from School for Making a Map

This isn't strictly speaking about words, but it is about the growing atmosphere of censorship driven by fear. In Fort Bend county, Texas, a Clements High School senior has been removed from the public school and sent to an alternative education center and banned from graduation ceremonies for making a computer game map of the school, probably for use in a shoot-em-up software title. The boy shared the map with some friends. A couple of them mentioned it to their parents, who complained to school system administrators. Supposedly police searched his room, with permission of his parents, and confiscated a hammer as a dangerous weapon. From the frightening to the foolish, civilization marches on.