What a 17th-century flower market tells us about the $7 billion trading scandal engulfing Trump’s Washington.
What does a delightful, candy-cane-coloured flower have to do with corruption in the highest levels of the US government?
Quite a lot, actually.
As Wall Street reels from the news of the sheer volume of trades President Trump has made in major companies with close dealings with the US administration, market veterans describe the level of activity as “insane,” with another market insider adding: “In the 40-plus years of my time on Wall Street, this is an unusual amount of trading by any standards.”
What would have caused heads to roll once upon a time is, today, just business as usual. Which makes my brain hurt.
As I so often do, I turned to the past for answers. And as always, it delivered. In the form of the “Forever Exalted” tulip, as it was known. It reveals how, and why, we find ourselves tangled up in a system that comes up trumps (pardon the pun) for the one-percenters, but leaves the rest of us out in the rain without a brolly.
A golden age
In the 17th century, the Dutch were enjoying their golden age. They were the wealthiest country in Europe, with an embarrassment of disposable income.
But being an austere Protestant society, gilt and flash and dazzle were out as a means of impressing friends and influencing people.
Tulips were another matter altogether. Flowers were seen as a suitably modest way to keep up with the Janszens.
The ultimate flex was the Semper Augustus. One of the so-called ‘broken tulip’ varieties, which meant it combined two flame-like colours in the same bloom, the “Forever Exalted” tulip was a freak of nature.
It was said that only 12 existed; all owned by a director of the Dutch East India Company. Its scarcity only made it more desirable.
Betting on the future
Tulipmania was the first, and the most famous, speculative bubble. But speculators weren’t trading the flowers themselves. They were buying rare, dormant bulbs that would, one day in the future, burst into bloom.
It gave us what’s now called the futures market. And it has blossomed into a multi-trillion-dollar business.
With that much money riding on bets placed on which way the wind will blow on everything from commodities to interest rates and currencies, it’s no wonder the world’s financial markets hang on every erratic public pronouncement that dribbles out of the American President’s mouth.
But there’s one thing that definitely wasn’t on my bingo card for 2026.
In explosive findings, a team from the Queensland University of Technology tracked 15 specific instances of what the authors describe as “unusual trading activity” around Trump’s social media posts over a two-month period as the President launched his assault on Iran.
As the authors put it, “This is not normal and can’t be explained by fluke variations in trading. The probability of patterns this extreme occurring by chance is in the order of one in a billion.”
How much money are we talking about? Well, Reuters reports that around US$7 billion of “well-timed market bets” were made on falling oil prices in March and April “across multiple exchanges and types of fuel and derivatives just before major Iranian policy announcements by U.S. President Donald Trump.”
The obligatory note of caution from the authors: “Our data doesn’t prove that insider trading is taking place… the pattern and events over time are exactly what you’d expect to see if people with advance notice of the president’s posts were systematically positioning themselves before he hits ‘post’…. We cannot prove that’s what’s happening, but we can show that something unusual is happening.” [original emphasis].
Insider trading comes in many shapes and forms.
Ask anyone who’s in the business after they’ve sunk a few glasses of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and they’ll tell you that it’s as common as a bump of coke to get you through the EOFY reporting season.
It’s only when insider trading is done at scale and in huge volumes that authorities even notice anything’s gone awry.
The laws exist to ensure there’s a level playing field for everyone who decides to play the market. It’s about building confidence in something that’s as slippery as an eel that’s just taken a dip in a vat of Vaseline.
Why would you sink your hard-earned into something if you knew that a fair number of the people riding the peaks and troughs know far more than you about what’s about to happen? It’s like placing a bet on a horse race that’s already been fixed.
The STOCK Act
That’s why it’s never been regarded as a particularly great thing for people ostensibly working in the public interest and being paid out of the public purse to exploit their position and the privileged information it gives them to play the financial markets.
It might surprise you—it certainly did me—to learn that a law explicitly banning members of Congress and federal employees from using non-public information for personal benefit was introduced as recently as 2012. Under President Obama. Who’s draining the swamp, then?
Before that, it all came down to ethical standards and commitment to the ideals of maintaining a level playing field. And as we know all too well, ethics, morals, and standards don’t feature on the playlist for many of those at the helm right now.
So, am I shocked that someone at the top of the shitheap that is 2026 Washington may be using the inside track to make a motza?
Not even vaguely.
What does surprise me is how brazen it is.
But the biggest mistake anyone can make is to think that the one in three Americans who support Trump no matter what will give even one half of a fancy, feathered flying fuck about any of this.
The point is, they’d be doing the same, given half the chance. They want to smash the system to the ground because it’s failing them. Why would they risk their lives defending a castle when they’re locked outside its walls?
To MAGA, Trump is King Gaiseric leading the Vandals into Rome in 455AD to strip the temples and palaces of their riches and sell its inhabitants into slavery.
Of course, the irony is that unlike the Vandal king, Trump’s not sharing his booty with his followers. He’ll be long gone by the time they’re set loose to loot the ruins. All they’ll find are piles of rubble and rotting corpses.
Because the raiders have already stormed the bastions.
The richest 10 per cent of American families control all but 7 per cent of the US stock market.
Half the population holds just one per cent of all available stocks.
Whoever is profiting off these stock movements, it sure as fuck isn’t the MAGA faithful lining up to buy made-in-China baseball caps and front-row tickets for Melania.
What the always-Trumpers fail to understand is that markets are cruel masters. As the gap between the one-percenters and the rest of us becomes less gulf and more yawning chasm, one thing is absolutely certain. Neoliberalism has failed the vast majority of us.
It became a thing in the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as the high priest and priestess of neoliberalism.
Without getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty, its motto can be summed up quite nicely as: “Markets work. Governments don’t.”
That’s why there was an unholy rush to privatise utilities and functions of state in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The idea was that the market would be a much more reliable and constant provider of the things we need to get through the day.
Markets mean choice and freedom.
That’s the thinking anyway.
The flipside?
Markets are Darwinian.
The ‘fittest’ thrive, while the others are left behind. Market forces punish those who need help and would otherwise rely on government support. They’re left to flounder, while the market rewards productive and ambitious members of society.
Fast forward a few decades, and we have reached a ghastly zenith where free market forces are failing vast swathes of the population. Even left-leaning governments bow to the pressures of big business and investor lobby groups, abandoning the interests of the workers they claim to represent.
As trickle-down economics shows itself to be less about the one-percenters showering the rest of us with wealth than it is pissing on our heads from above, I suspect most of us are beginning to realise we’ve been sold a three-legged, blind donkey and a cart with a broken axle.
Is it any wonder the disenfranchised jump on board when a brazen con artist appears on the horizon, waving the promise of jobs, a sense of purpose and pride, and packaging it all up in a national-flag-emblazoned gift box?
The financial markets as they exist today are a honeypot for those with an inside track.
None of this is new. Whoever is playing the market like this is gaming the system as they have been for decades.
Like the tulip craze before it, today’s stock market is a form of institutionalised gambling. It taps into the human appetite for risk-taking… the adrenaline rush of taking a chance on something that may pay off big time.
Tulips… Dot-Com… Subprime Mortgages… NFTs. They’re all the same. And there’s a term for the herd mentality and wishful, magical thinking that lies behind every market bubble.
It’s called irrational exuberance.
Market prices skyrocket when media reports and trending online talking points fuel an emotional response that makes otherwise reasonable people lose their minds. It’s economic FOMO, as investors rush to buy in, even though prices have already detached themselves from reality.
When someone is in a position where a passing comment can see billions of dollars change hands in an instant, that person has a formidable economic weapon at his or her disposal.
A big part of the problem is that “the market” is a house of cards built on a beanbag. Sure, it’s pretty impressive to look at. But it’s one ill-timed breath away from disaster. In part, it’s due to the ephemeral nature of what’s being traded.
I believe that historians of the future will marvel at our wide-eyed faith in a system that’s so deeply flawed, much as we wonder today at what the fuck the 16th century was thinking when it went with lead face paint.
We do need economic systems. We’ve had them ever since we started wanting something more than a tree to hang out in, and some roots and berries to chew on.
It all comes down to exchanging something you have, for something you want.
It begins with barter. When you have two people with commodities they want to exchange, it’s a pretty straightforward affair. They negotiate, and a fair trade is agreed upon.
It’s no different when you’re purchasing something outright. There’s a price tag, you have cash, and you decide whether it’s worth paying what’s being asked.
But modern financial markets are another thing altogether. The futures exchange is a place where people take a punt on what may transpire in the future. And although buying a share in a company on the stock market may give you a say in how it’s run, you don’t really ‘own’ anything in the traditional sense of the word.
You can’t take your piece of a company and put it on the mantelpiece.
But none of this is new.
Futures trading has been going on for a bit.
Four thousand, seven hundred and fifty years ago, the Babylonian king, Hammurabi, wrote into law rules to govern the sale of assets and services in the future for set prices.
But the first place traders formally gathered to exchange commodities and promissory notes was in 1531 in Belgium’s Antwerp. What was called the bourse was named after the Van der Beurze family, which owned the tavern where the trade took place.
Not one to be left behind, Queen Elizabeth I picked up the idea and established a similar exchange in 1571. The Royal Exchange, as it was called, offered shares in speculative trading expeditions as the British Empire went to sea in search of lands to plunder.
But things really took off in 1602 when the Dutch East India Company, or VOC, decided it needed more nutmeg for its cappuccino, and called for some serious financial backing to cover the cost of bringing spices back from Indonesia, then known to Europeans as the East Indies.
And this is where the trouble begins.
It arises in the clash between two fundamental economic principles.
First, we’ve got supply and demand, which is one of the pillars of the Western economic system.
In an ideal marketplace, prices are set according to how many people want something, and how badly they want it, relative to how much of that something is available.
It’s probably the oldest and most enduring economic principle. It’s a basic, exchange-based system.
Imagine yourself in France’s Pyrenean foothills 30,000 years or so ago.
In summer, scooping trout out of the river is a doddle. You haul bucketloads up to the cave most nights. Going rate? One trout for a handful of Oogh’s tubers and a few hazelnuts.
You’re also going to be smoking some of those fish as well. Because winter’s coming and that river’s going to be frozen over. But your cave mates still need their protein.
As snow blankets the ground, you can ask whatever you want for your stash of dried fish.
Forget tubers. One dried trout will get you a flint and a deerskin. That is, until Grug from the next valley turns up, and he only wants a bundle of firewood and an arrowhead for his dried fish. So, you drop your price to hold onto your customers.
Movement like this is the fibre that keeps the West’s economic bowels regular.
The supply-and-demand mechanism relies on open, fair competition to operate. It’s why anti-competitive practices are illegal. Healthy competition is one of the cornerstones of our economic system.
If Grug dams the river and keeps all the trout for himself, it will put you out of business. That means he can ask whatever he wants for his fish. And, why wouldn’t he?
And that’s where it gets tricky.
Because another pillar of Western economic thinking, homo economicus, means you look after yourself, and yourself alone. The one absolute certainty, according to the theory, is that we’re all rational and self-interested. If there’s a way of improving our financial lot, then we’ll do it. Most of all… and here’s the clincher… altruism doesn’t enter the equation.
Ask not what you may do for others. Ask only what you may do for yourself.
Grug doesn’t care that his monopoly means his customers are paying more than they should for their fish, because it means his family are kitted out in all the latest skins, and he just bought himself the latest rolling stone.
It’s no different today.
Apply that theory to a marketplace that expects you to ignore information that might pay off big… or resist the temptation to tweak a few things to turn something to your advantage and send your share portfolio skyward… and you can see why we’re fucking delusional to think that our economic system is bulletproof.
It’s a system that presumes perfect competition. But competition only works if there’s more than one person selling the same thing, or a substitute that will do in a pinch.
That’s why monopolies are outlawed. Stockpiling does the same thing. If you control the entire supply of something people desperately need or want, you can set the price.
And then there’s the other bête noire of the market. Price fixing. Things stop working when a few people who control supply get together on the quiet and decide what price they’re going to charge for that widget without which our car will stop running.
Then we go full circle back to insider trading, which is about creating a fair playing field for all.
The problem with all of these principles? They’re a slap in homo economicus’ bloated face. Given half the chance, he’ll piss all over them.
Homo economicus is a plague on Western society.
And at the moment, he’s running the show.
I’ve seen the way it works, up close and personal, in another commercial marketplace. The art market. The difference there, is that it’s the Wild West. They don’t even pretend there are any regulations.
During my time managing the art department of a major Australian auction house, I saw how easy it is to fuel speculative bubbles and manipulate prices. More to the point, I saw it actually happening in real time. It made me head back to university to write my PhD on how the art auction record reflects market manipulation. But that’s a story for another day.
The trick with art is that there’s an uneven distribution of information.
Like the insiders betting on stock movements because they know something you don’t, in the art market the people who know what’s going on play the system like a Stradivarius.
Complicating things further is the fact that there’s rarely a real connection between the material value of an artwork and its market value.
Say you find a piece of butcher’s paper with a bird scribbled on it in biro. Its dollar value? Zero. Paper and biro. Utterly worthless in a material sense.
But if it’s signed “Picasso”? Make that a six-figure sum.
And only a small number of people can tell you with any degree of certainty what that value might be. Art is not an ounce of gold you can weigh, or a diamond you can grade. There are so many intangible values involved in estimating its worth, the margin for error is enormous.
It’s like a pot of face cream. There’s nothing tangible for a buyer to rely on when making a choice other than hype and marketing. At that point, price becomes the main indicator of quality.
Under those conditions, price volatility becomes the norm.
And when that’s accepted as a feature of a marketplace, it creates conditions that are ripe for exploitation. Unusual price fluctuations aren’t unusual. They’re expected.
It’s why art has become an investment of choice for criminals across the globe. There are few better ways to launder filthy cash. Buy a Picasso with drug money, then auction it in New York. Dirty money out, clean money in. Easy done. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/3-drug-kingpins-art-adored-316531
But the problem with speculative bubbles, and prices set through manipulation rather than based on real demand?
Eventually, they collapse.
Spectacularly.
As it is with art, so it was with tulips.
In smoky taverns across Amsterdam, thousands of people had sunk their savings into the tulip market, with some bulbs changing hands up to ten times in a single day.
Until, one day, they weren’t.
In early February 1637, the tulip market collapsed in a heap. Demand dried up, and bulbs dropped to a tenth of their value. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160419-tulip-mania-the-flowers-that-cost-more-than-houses
Overnight, the tavern trade in tulips dried up.
As for the Semper Augustus tulip, it turns out its unique colouration came about thanks to an aphid-borne virus that made the bulb impossible to cultivate.
When it first appeared, it was one of the most sought-after objects on the planet.
It’s now extinct.
I think there’s a lesson in that for all of us.
