How financial markets fuel conspiracy culture and our crisis of truth--and why rethinking finance is democracy's most urgent need. "An important book showing that 'post-truth politics' cannot be understood without studying the broader socioeconomic transformation of our times, especially the rise of finance. A must-read." -Thomas Piketty
Current debates treat disinformation as if it were a cultural failure, suggesting that our remedies should focus on restoring expertise, fact checking, or media literacy. But what if we are missing the crux of the issue? In
Trading Truth, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou argues that we are--that, in fact, distortion is not a glitch of political reality but a systemic feature of finance capitalism. Far from merely corrupting truth, financial markets--from machine-learning trading and cryptocurrencies to ETFs and prediction markets--reshape what counts as real and what gets dismissed as fake.
This book traces this distortion and its role in the making of a new kind of financial populism, one that binds Trump's MAGA movement and tech lords to finance's rising titans: asset managers and quant traders. This alliance--political as much as epistemic--takes shape around warped valuations, spurious correlations, and the systematic leveraging of volatility. And yet it draws in vast publics, offering a form of belonging and participation that mainstream politics has failed to provide.
The author shows how today's conspiratorial culture is inseparable from the operations of finance in ways not recognized before
. More than disinformation, fraud, or manipulation, distortion becomes a means of managing the vast complexity of our time, and even of finding community within it. The book offers readers a way forward: a theory of truth that meets finance head on and reimagines how it could be turned toward shared prosperity.
金融市場如何助長陰謀文化與我們的真相危機——以及為何重新思考金融，是民主最迫切的需求。
「這是一本重要的著作，揭示若不研究我們這個時代更廣泛的社會經濟轉型，尤其是金融的崛起，就無法理解『後真相政治』。必讀之作。」——Thomas Piketty
當前的討論將錯誤資訊視為一種文化失敗，因而認為解決之道應著重於恢復專業權威、進行事實查核，或提升媒體識讀能力。但如果我們錯過了問題的核心呢？在《交易真相》（Trading Truth）中，Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou 主張，我們確實忽略了核心；事實上，扭曲並非政治現實中的故障，而是金融資本主義的系統性特徵。金融市場不只是腐蝕真相——從機器學習交易與加密貨幣，到 ETF 和預測市場——更重新塑造了什麼會被視為真實，以及什麼會被斥為虛假。
本書追溯這種扭曲，以及它在孕育一種新型金融民粹主義過程中所扮演的角色。這種金融民粹主義將 Trump 的 MAGA 運動與科技巨頭，連結至金融界日益崛起的巨擘：資產管理者與量化交易者。這個聯盟不僅是政治性的，也是認知與知識論上的聯盟；它圍繞著扭曲的估值、似是而非的相關性，以及對波動性的系統性槓桿操作而形成。然而，它卻吸引了廣大民眾，提供了一種歸屬感與參與形式，而主流政治始終未能提供這些。
作者揭示，今日的陰謀文化與金融運作密不可分，其關聯程度前所未見。扭曲不只是錯誤資訊、詐欺或操弄，更成為管理我們這個時代龐大複雜性的一種手段，甚至也成為在其中尋找群體歸屬的方式。本書為讀者提供了一條前進之路：提出一套正面迎戰金融的真相理論，並重新想像如何讓金融走向共享繁榮。
Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou is Professor of Economy and Society at University College London, where he is Founder and Director of the UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies. His first book Speculative Communities was published in 2022 to international acclaim. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, El País, London Review of Books Podcast, and venues such as the Locarno Film Festival and the Deichtorhallen Gallery. He has written for The Guardian, Die Zeit, Aeon, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications.
Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou 是 University College London 的經濟與社會學教授，也是 UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies 的創辦人兼主任。他的第一本著作《Speculative Communities》於 2022 年出版，並獲得國際間廣泛好評。他的作品曾刊載於《The New Yorker》、《El País》與《London Review of Books Podcast》，也曾在 Locarno Film Festival、Deichtorhallen Gallery 等場域展出。他曾為《The Guardian》、《Die Zeit》、《Aeon》、《Los Angeles Review of Books》及其他出版物撰稿。
