They are all financial geniuses, venture capitalists, and fund managers. Money appears from nowhere solely as a result of American ingenuity and perseverance.  The stock market goes up and up.  Prices rise, inflation hits double digits and factories turn out products faster than ever before.  We are happy says the administration and the public must be happy too.  Prosperity, propinquity, altruism, and Americanism abound.  Politicians shout, “We will make America great again.”   Their opponents propose broader subsidies and the lifting of tariffs.  The judicial wing, the third safeguard of our democracy concurs with the machination, because the shakers and movers are smart and we are not and where is the capitol going?  Only a computer can trace it nowadays.

A seasoned mathematician once said, “Figures do not lie but liars figure.”  And they are right all of the time.  This is the season for derivative instruments, manipulation, and investment to modulate the business cycle for everyone’s good of course.  

The economic cycle as proposed by Adam Smith, and pixelated by Malthus is a sine wave phenomenon with a minimum and maximum as value and an ordinate Y as time.  The economic cycle, no matter its origin, cause, or impetus is real and occurs periodically, Mathematically, the curve looks like a bimodal parabola with roots of x squared and negative x squared on a long-time line.  Mathematically, this can be seen as y = x squared + b for the positive part of the curve. when sample size approaches infinity, it becomes a bell curve. Taking the Newtonian first derivative of the function gives the minimum and maximum of the curve at a given time. Set the result to 0,1,-1 and extrapolate.  The second derivative yields the point of inflection where the positive parabola becomes a negative parabola at point B+X.   When an investment analyst plots the economic curve of a product or corporation, they can estimate the curve given by the plot and when introduced into a computer with a graphing application, he or she can deduce the formula given by the curve.   The first derivative yields the high and low points of net income or stock value.   The second derivative yields the time when the curve becomes positive or negative.  With some historical data, an investor can buy and sell stocks or bonds on margin concerning the first derivative of the function.   In essence, he or she can predict the future value of an investment instrument and buy and sell at appropriate moments to make a profit.  Using derivative instruments, an investor can predict if a stock, bond, or market will rise or fall and he or she can buy or sell instruments poignantly and succinctly, this means getting profit where there is none and dumping loss on unsuspecting investors.  The continuing manipulation of the economic cycle over time slowly drives up prices and the economic cycle creeps up the ordinate scale.   Remember when the stock market was 11000?  Now it is 45000.   Are factories generating a greater income or profit on product or are we seeing merely mathematical skullduggery resulting in price increases and inflation?

Derivative instruments and investing should be illegal.   Insider trading is illegal.  Why not derivative instruments?  This author feels the public is not aware of what bright mathematicians are doing to milk the economy and generate capital where there is no capital to generate.  Give them an inch and they take a mile and man will always figure out how to get blood from a stone.  This is the American way, I guess.  Why can’t we return to “and to this republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all”?