Description

In "The Futures", Emily Lambert charts the dramatic evolution of the commodity‐futures business from its roots in the early trading pits of the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange—where farmers, gamblers and merchants gathered to hedge, speculate and trade—to its transformation into high‐speed global electronic markets. She argues that far from being parasitic, speculators play a vital role in liquidity and price‐discovery, while tracing how the social norms, cultural bonds and rules of the original Chicago market created a kind of “free” market architecture. Lambert warns that as futures logic spread into other markets—without those supporting norms—the result has sometimes been instability.