Everyone knows it, noone says it: the global rentiers -- that hideous congerie of bond ghouls, inflation hawks, pattern-hounds, punters, thieves, thugs, pugs, fugs, New Paradigm productivity cretins, and good old-fashioned swindlers, who know the price of everything and the exchange-value of nothing; an elite of accidental billionaires, currency gnomes, mutual-funds wombats and silicon industriocrats, who are consultants for everything and manufacturers of nothing -- run the world economy. And judging by the devastating economic collapse of Latin America, Eastern Europe and much of Asia and Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, they're doing one goddamn shitty job of it.

Still and all, the current rentier mania is significant for two reasons. First, Wall Street is living proof that any idiot can get rich in a market economy. Second, what if workers began to control their own companies, with the whole weight of their talent and experience? If the rentiers are globalizing, can the world proletariat be far behind?

Here's a useful guide to what Wall Street says, and what it really means:

• Bonds: Fancy, expensive debt issued by country or company. Supposedly less risky than stocks, but it all depends on what mood Moody's is in.
• Book earnings: What capitalist firms say they make to analysts, punters and similar thieves. Constantly revised up and down in order to maximize share turbulence and enable corporate honchos to unload their options at maximum rates of return.
• Brokers: Hucksters of the Great American Stock Swindle. Make out like bandits, because that's exactly what they are. Their basic tactics are the Pitch, the Pitch and Run, the Catch and Slam, the Poke, and the Punt. Not to be trusted any further than you can throw their client-server mainframe.
• Catch and Slam: Luring new investors into a hedge fund and then churning the stock mix, resulting in fat fees for minimal gains.
• Churn: Constantly buying to sell and selling to buy for no damn reason at all, aside from raking in that 4% finders fee on every transaction. Done only with O.P.M. (see below).
• E-bills: Treasury notes denominated in euros. Due to replace dollar-denominated T-bills.
• Liquidity: Total amount of readily-available cash or other asset in a specific market. If this dries up, all hell can (and usually does) break loose.
• Mutual funds: Computer Age term for global casino gambling.
• Nothing: Total amount of actual value added to the economy by stock markets.
• O.P.M.: Short for Other People's Money. This is the chief source of casino -- er, stock market -- funds. The pension fund was just lying there in the sun, officer -- honest!
• Pitch: Cold-calling of clients with outrageous stories of 35% capital gains.
• Pitch and Run: Raiding of other client bases.
• Poke: Pushing conservative or knowledgeable investors off of a fund
• Profit: Money-form of the surplus labor-time extracted by capitalism. Not to be confused with cash flow or book earnings.
• Punt: Leveraging client gains for bank credits which can then be further speculated upon
• Scam: Any Wall Street investment vehicle which runs out of fresh investors willing to be fleeced.
• Stocks: Ownership claim on corporation. Not the same thing as the assets and liabilities of that corporation itself. Often goes through wildly irrational increases and decreases. Has nothing to do with actual investment or health of firm or industry.
• T-bills: Main storehouse of financial value, at least until the euro shows up. E-bills will someday replace T-bills as world reserve currency.
• Yield: Surplus-rent on a given financial transaction. Typically outrageously large in relation to the tiny wages greedhead corporations pay.