Mr. Lauria criticized President Obama for derisory remarks he made last week calling his clients speculators.
"Nothing is certain in life, but death and taxes, which bodes well for the nation's largest tax preparation company H&R Block, which delivered a record setting tax season," wrote value adviser John Buckingham of Laguna Beach, Calif.-based Al Frank Asset Management in a July 7 missive to his Prudent Speculator newsletter subscribers.
The play follows an ex-soldier named Turner released back into civilian life after the independence of India in 1947 only to see his livelihood decimated by property speculators and his political ambitions in the Conservative party thwarted by a candidate running on a "modernisation" ticket.
A more plausible explanation is that Dr Mahathir is using his diatribes against speculators to divert attention from economic problems at home, such as a soaring current-account deficit and an overheating property market.As for the proposed remedy, this displays an alarming ignorance of the workings of international financial markets.
Mr Obama, meanwhile, has set his sights on speculators, a habitual if elusive scapegoat, creating a special new task-force to hunt them down.Yet as Paul Bledsoe of the Bipartisan Policy Centre, a think-tank, points out, the most effective step to protect Americans from rising petrol prices has already been taken.
He presented charts showing the growth of the oil futures market, in which investors buy and sell promises to deliver oil at a later date, and claimed that "the increase in demand from index speculators" — his term for institutional investors who buy commodity futures — "is almost equal to the increase in demand from China".
"Whether it is an urban rioter mindlessly burning down a small shop that serves his community, or a speculator turning his back on the question of who bears the ultimate cost for his acquisitive adventures in the virtual reality of today's financial world, the picture is of atoms spinning apart in the dark".
In a more rueful, haunting self-assessment, Wood cites Hitchcock's admission that his murder-ridden films made him, like his father, "a speculator in perishables".
Speculators will speculate.
Mr Cavallo blamed foreign economists, who have questioned his strategy, but mainly "speculators".
