As our regular readers are well aware, since this blog’s first post on 1st January 2011, mediolana.wordpress.com has enjoyed expanding traffic; first steadily, and then more spectacularly. But little could have prepared us for the phenomenal reaction to yesterday’s post on the topic of Alessio Rastani, the head honcho at the until recently little-known Santoro Projects company who has become a global sensation on the back of a gloriously frank live BBC News interview telecast earlier this week. We have literally had the scale of our graphs recalibrated as the seemingly insatiable demand for quality analysis of this extraordinary man translates into an Internet stampede of the like that is rarely witnessed.
In our post of 29th September 2011 entitled ‘Alessio Rastani: Rogue Trader or Prophet of Doom?‘, we lamented the fact that many commentators (of, we feel compelled to add, questionable financial literacy) seemed to delight in the idea that Mr. Rastani might be a hoax; alternatively, some posited that owing to his modest residential address and the fact that Santoro Projects can be categorised, with little hesitation, as an SME, Rastani should not be listened to.
From a perusal of his leadingtrader.com blog, however, two things seem to be clear. Firstly, the idea that Rastani was purely a hoax should never have gained much traction: leadingtrader.com links to Rastani’s YouTube account, which shows that he has been uploading videos relating to financial matters (as well as more personal content, such as a video clip detailing what a visitor can expect to see on landing at Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran, Iran) for around one year; his blog contains many interesting, if perhaps slightly derivative, posts on the art of trading in shares.
Secondly, the deluge of comments on his recent posts illustrates that Rastani has obviously tapped into deeply-held fears that much of the developed’s world’s population hold about the likelihood of a prolonged period of fiscal uncertainty, and for his direct, brutally honest assessment of the state of the global world economy – as well as his urging ordinary people that they should act to protect their assets from devaluation – Rastani is being hailed as a postmodern folk hero.
Indeed, we at Mediolana looked upon arguments based on little more than prejudice and poor research as a sign that many media outlets were simply unwilling or unable to tackle the London-based independent trader’s contentions, and challenged those that scoffed at Rastani’s ostensibly humble material circumstances to address the points that he made.
Finally, the requested debate appears to be commencing. BBC News has taken three days to comment analytically on an interview it originally broadcast, but at least it has now published a piece on whether Rastani’s views actually have some merit; Russia Today, meanwhile, has pointed to the fact that hysterical, knee-jerk responses to Rastani’s appearance on BBC News have, rather than any serious examination of his ideas, been the default position, in some senses echoing the words of this blog.
As the newest kid on the economic punditry block appears on CNN (above), amasses many thousands of followers on Twitter and sees his Facebook page deluged with praise from adoring fans, Alessio Rastani may well have occasion to reflect back on a week in which he pricked not a few paradigms, and in so doing shifted the media landscape in a way that until recently would have been unthinkable.
Mediolana 