Talk:Zero Hedge

Denied as founder

Ivandjiiski denies that he's the founder of zero hedge: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/08/who-is-tyler-durden_21.html --66.108.79.139 (talk) 00:04, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

That's not what it says. Figureofnine (talk) 21:37, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

It does not matter who the founder is and whether he/she denies it or not. What matters is if it's the truth. Messengers are exchangeable. They can be shot, but if the message is the truth, tallying with known facts - it does not matter who says and the message deserves to be out there and survive. 58.174.193.15 (talk) 01:12, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Bias?

If the founder (or at least major contributor) was banned from the industry for fraud, wouldn't that give him an incentive to attack the industry? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Financestudent (talk • contribs) 18:14, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

No. It's well known that fraud convictions are used to punish those who do not play by the rules. Clearly this is the case as no one of any significance has been even charged with fraud despite the extraordinary events of the past two years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.239.64.82 (talk) 02:14, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

^ I hope that's sarcasm, didn't bring my tinfoil hat

...or sign your post, or read much. Or can you name anyone on Wall Street who has been convicted of fraud other than Bernie Madoff? Marrante (talk) 07:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

The logic of your defense of the purported founder is faulty. To claim that fraud convictions are used to "punish those who do not play by the rules" is just another way of saying they are committing fraud but pissing somebody off. It does not mean they are innocent. The fact that no big players have been convicted is irrelevant.

Advertisement template discussion

Hi, I added the template. I got quickly thereafter an inquiry that I'll paste here with a response. Please add more opinions! --Sigmundur (talk) 20:59, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Do you understand the significance of what Zero Hedge is and has done? I have only had this "advertising" complaint about one other article I've worked on (also not one I started), one that originally came from a promotional brochure. That article was very difficult to write because there was little about it that didn't come from a source intimately connected with the subject and I completely re-wrote the entire article. With this article, I expanded it and added citations, but it was also difficult because of the choice of the contributors to remain anonymous. Nonetheless, it has a huge reputation in the financial community and is a very important website, well deserving of a Wikipedia page. I'm a good writer and I am careful about how I write here. I'd like to know just what you object to in the article. Thanks. Marrante (talk) 19:50, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Sure. As you mentioned, the page "originally came from a promotional brochure". Even if you "re-wrote the entire article", it's still written in a form of a short story rather than encyclopedia article. I'm not disputing its "huge reputation in the financial community" or that it's "a very important website"; that's how I happened upon it, I was sort of interested.

But the thing is, I never read the article, because it is... well, a corporate story. A promotional brochure. Completely off the top of my head, Zero Punctuation provides an example of how you should (please!) try to re-arrange the article. I could do it for you, of course, but since you seem to take the page rather personally ("do you understand the significance of..." as in "are you stupid?" or "I'm a huge fan and your gut feeling is wrong"). So a couple of things that Zero Punctuation writers have got right:

• short opening. Please don't tell the whole story in the first paragraph. That makes it sound like a f** vision statement or a sales pitch.
• name the sections after, you know, topic and not an era in the glorious history of Zero Hedge or a suggestive title (like in a novel). My suggestion (really just quick idea, not maybe the best):
  • Blog profile
  • Writers' background
  • Revealing Goldman Sachs' flash trading (or similar that makes it apparent right off the bat what the section is about)
  • (more interesting details)
  • See also
  • References
• Get to the gist: what it is, why it's special right now. Save the important events as final sections after the introduction. I want short summary at first, or I get tired and stop reading. I want VERY basic information (like Zero Punctuation#Format) next, otherwise I again feel like you're just trying to make me read stuff I don't want to read (yet?). You know, like an ad.

The article has good and interesting information, it's just hard to pick out of there without reading the whole thing, which is not what I necessarily want to do. I should be able to find the relevant basic stuff by just briefly eyeing at the article, that's the point of all this "encyclopedic" stuff.

Gaah, I probably should've just fixed it instead of ranting here (: but I'll let you do it, you probably know and care more about the Zero Hedge anyway. I'm fine if you just remove the ad template yourself, just wanted to point out this I guess... --Sigmundur (talk) 20:57, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but your first statement is based on a wrong understanding of what I wrote. The promotional brochure was about the other article, not Zero Hedge. None of the material on Zero Hedge came from a promotional brochure. I only mentioned the other article because it was the only other time an article of mine was tagged with "advertising copy" and there, it made sense to me because of the difficulties. It was impossible to tweak the article and was necessary to completely re-write it. With Zero Hedge, that was not the case. I tweaked some passages, expanded a lot and cited everything I could. For the most part, I only write what I can cite, the main exception being when I translate articles and when I pick them up, if there is material that looks legit, I leave it until I'm convinced it needs to be removed. There's not much use replying to your comment, since it's based on a misunderstanding of where the article came from. Please remove the template yourself. Marrante (talk) 21:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Quick rebut anyway. The headers are written the way they are because to me, these are the salient points. The reason the blog is different and so effective is that it's written by people who really know what they're talking about – industry insiders. How many business analysts have an actual clue? And more critical to the economic health of the US and other countries, how many business journalists have a clue? Zero Hedge is cutting edge. It doesn't try to write to the layperson, it writes for peers, so if the average person just starts reading, he will likely come away scratching his head, like I did. The one thing that was clear to me from the outset, however, was that they did know what they were saying and it wasn't just the usual drivel. "Growing influence" was the salient point, not the GS story. The GS flash trading story was big, huge in fact, but was just one story. With the U.S. and world economies in shambles, a website like ZH is critical and its "growing influence" is what will make mainstream journalists pick up stories from ZH and maybe stop wasting everyone's time writing gossip and police blotter reports. They don't change the number of jobs being created or the amount of taxpayer money being funneled to Wall St. Look at the important work Matt Taibbi's done. If I understand him correctly, his education started with ZH. Marrante (talk) 22:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I did read the thing after I wrote that piece of text, actually. And my points are still valid: it's not written in concise and encyclopedic way, and people will not enjoy reading it. Its content may be neat but it needs to be re-organized. None of my points had anything to do with if "business journalists have a clue" or how "mainstream journalists pick up stories from ZH". I'm arguing about the form, not the content. And the form still makes me feel "ad". --Sigmundur (talk) 13:54, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

but, you know, whatever. Maybe one day someone more diligent than me happens to read it and cleans it up. Not my fight. --Sigmundur (talk) 13:56, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I did see that you read the article later, but you tagged it first. Isn't that the cart before the horse? This article generally gets 100-150 hits a day. I started working on it about a month ago and I believe I improved the article. It was created on August 23, 2009 and first cleared 1000 hits per month in March 2010; the next month, 2000; the next month, 3000. You're the first to make this complaint, so it looks like you're in the minority on this. Marrante (talk) 14:38, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Explanation of removal

I have removed the template myself because your user page indicates you're not always around and you said to do it myself anyway. My preference would be for you to do it, but under the circumstances, I've gone ahead. Also, just for the record, my question "do you understand" was not meant as "are you stupid". I'm quite capable of writing that if that's what I mean. Marrante (talk) 05:41, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I have given my previously posted reply above a new header for the convenience of those who want to cut to the chase. The rest of this post adds some pertinent information.

Although you said this article reads "like an ad" (and later admitted not reading it before tagging the article), a lede is, in fact, supposed to summarize the article, or as you wrote, "tell the whole story". Its purpose is to pique the reader's interest. Ad copy is not a summary, it's writing that tries to sell you something, which is why the important part of an ad is called the "call to action" or "the hook". Wikipedia also uses the word "hook" in this way, most notably on T:TDYK, where they draw the interest of the reader using a maximum of 200 characters. This does not make the DYK section of the main page an advertisement, though its purpose is to increase readership for new articles. Zero Hedge was never "written like advertising copy" and the template should never have been left there. Marrante (talk) 06:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

ties to ABC Media Ltd.

The article should point out the ties to "ABC Media Ltd." what company is this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.30.210.121 (talk) 19:25, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

JPM Buy Silver

Zero Hedge didn't have anything to do with this. There are some user comments, which may or may not have led to someone coming up with the idea, but there's no concrete evidence for that either. If anything, this can go on either of their wiki's. If there were sections on the Zero Hedge Wiki for every idea a user expressed in the comments section, Zero Hedge's wiki would be unmanageable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:1A28:1101:109:1337:0:0:274 (talk) 18:51, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Silence over Reinhart/Rogoff 2010 paper that failed replication

Political motives for censoring big economic news dealt a deadly blow to austerity economics. Most of the site believes in austerity economics. Face the reality Reinhart/Rogoff austerity got taken down by a simple Excel spreadsheet. --JLAmidei (talk) 02:16, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Is there anything to actually add to the page based on that? Or are you just ranting? TheSoundAndTheFury (talk) 03:39, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

-- that assertion is wrong, and ZH did have some articles discussing the error. Also note that there is a difference between "austerity" as used by Keynesians and Austrians. Spending has continued to increase in all the countries in which Keynesians are whining about "austerity". It is also the case that cuts have been to social welfare programs rather than to other items like military spending.

The idea that the excel error repudiated calls for debt reduction is so ignorant as to be absurd. Krugman seized on it, and ZH addressed that. The truth is that 'austerity' in the sense of reductions in deficit spending have only been tried in a couple of places, like the Baltic countries - where after initial pain, their economies began expanding, which is what Austrian economists say would happen.

I suspect you don't know the first thing about Austrian economics, JL- so where did you obtain what you pass off as knowledge? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.136.54.23 (talk) 22:13, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Basically, let's see some good sources and we could add them to the article. Otherwise let's not do ideological discussions. TheSoundAndTheFury (talk) 00:14, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Studies

http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04deaa6388b1/publication/566/
http://qz.com/88781/after-crunching-reinhart-and-rogoffs-data-weve-concluded-that-high-debt-does-not-cause-low-growth/?oref=dbamerica --JLAmidei (talk) 04:31, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

What is news? - Zero Hedge Tagline

CNN states that Zero Hedge, "a financial blog, offers deeply conspiratorial, anti-establishment and pessimistic view of the world." I am zooming into that statement because Zero Hedge is a financial blog that aggregates news and opinion from other sources. The CNN article goes on to say that sometimes Zero Hedge identifies financial issues before they become mainstream stories.

The tagline for Zero Hedge might need to be refined from the current entry;

--Zero Hedge is a news website, content aggregator, and collection of blogs by contributing editors. It reports on economics, Wall Street, and the financial sector and is credited with bringing the controversial practice of flash trading to public attention in 2009 via a series of posts alleging that Goldman Sachs' access to flash order information allowed the firm to gain unfair profits. The news portion of the site is written by a group of editors who collectively write under the pseudonym "Tyler Durden", a character from the novel and film Fight Club.

Some suggested elements;

-financial blog

-aggregation of editorial opinions and news

-credited with identifying issues of importance in advance of mainstream financial news

Any Ideas?

Lfrankbalm (talk)lfrankbalmLfrankbalm (talk) 17:54, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

See also (very weak section)

See also is very weak. Time has a list to check out

Business Insider Grasping Reality with a Sharp Beak Econbrowser Rortybomb Dealbreaker Paul Kedrosky The Wealth Report WalletPop Naked Capitalism Real Time Economics Megan McArdle DealBook Street Sweep Free Exchange Economix The Big Picture Zero Hedge Planet Money Ezra Klein The Consumerist Freakonomics Calculated Risk Marginal Revolution Felix Salmon The Conscience of a Liberal — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lfrankbalm (talk • contribs) 04:26, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Article still needs a lot of work

The article still reads like an ad and it needs to be revised. It's obvious that some biased people are trying to paint zh as a legitimate website and are trying to delete anything critical of zh. However wikipedia is no place for advertising blogs. 88.214.162.38 (talk) 12:24, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I am returning the Matt Taibi quotation removed by an admittedly biased SPA. Please don't vandalize the Pedia. petrarchan47คุก 01:18, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Predictions

It is worth nothing that the website predict the collapse of the financial system. EVERY WEEK. From 2009.

What's Wrong with ZeroHedge?

Although ZeroHedge does offer much useful information, many of the articles promote thinly-supported paranoid conspiracies. While they criticize the mainstream media, ZH has adopted the techniques of tabloid journalism: hyperbolic headlines, provocative photos, misleading and inaccurate claims. It seems the writers/editors of ZH are essentially anarchists who apparently have few core values; most of their articles are either focused on criticizing something or someone or describing events which they gleefully see as harbingers of the inevitable breakdown of social order. Still, their editorial stance is clearly far right-wing. A large number of the readers who comment on the articles are beyond rabid: they envision every newsworthy event as a false-flag conspiracy, they hate every minority, see a vast Jewish cabal running and ruining the world, many support the rise of neo-Nazism, belittle the poor for their laziness and accepting welfare and simultaneously criticize the rich for their wealth. While the official policy of ZH is intolerant of racism, you’d never know it after viewing the readers’ unrestricted comments.