Rebel of the Week: Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge.com

“Think of everything we’ve accomplished, man. Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium.” -Tyler Durden, Fight Club

One of the most popular and useful resources in the world of sound money and libertarian finance is the popular financial blog, ZeroHedge. Updated as many as a dozen times a day with global financial news and analysis as it breaks, if you’re a believer in sound money, Fed transparency (or better yet, abolition), competing currencies, Austrian economics, and free markets, you’ll love ZeroHedge. If you believe in these things, but your technical knowledge and understanding of high finance is still a work in progress (like mine!), ZeroHedge will start whipping you into shape real quick!

“Tyler Durden: We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

Narrator: Martha Stewart.

Tyler Durden: F*** Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So f*** off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.”

ZeroHedge is written anonymously by a blogger or group of bloggers who go(es) by the name, Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt in the cult classic movie, Fight Club, based off the Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same name. Durden, a sort of “anti-hero” spends the movie obsessed with lifting the men around him from the existential squalor of joyless aspirational consumerism fueled by hours of grinding work at jobs they hate and the seemingly endless liquidity of the banking system’s easy credit. He starts with a project called Fight Club, for which the film and book are named, but quickly escalates to Project Mayhem, a conspiracy to destroy the credit companies’ records and hasten a process of decay that Durden sees as inherent in a society predicated on debt and consumption.

From the ZeroHedge Manifesto: “though often maligned (typically by those frustrated by an inability to engage in ad hominem attacks) anonymous speech has a long and storied history in the united states. used by the likes of mark twain (aka samuel langhorne clemens) to criticize common ignorance, and perhaps most famously by alexander hamilton, james madison and john jay (aka publius) to write the federalist papers, we think ourselves in good company in using one or another nom de plume. particularly in light of an emerging trend against vocalizing public dissent in the united states, we believe in the critical importance of anonymity and its role in dissident speech. like the economist magazine, we also believe that keeping authorship anonymous moves the focus of discussion to the content of speech and away from the speaker- as it should be. we believe not only that you should be comfortable with anonymous speech in such an environment, but that you should be suspicious of any speech that isn’t.”

The anonymity of ZeroHedge’s Tyler Durden is part of its charm and adds an aura of mystique that has captivated readers. There’s also been plenty of speculation as to just who “Tyler Durden” is. In response to theories that Durden is the pseudonym of a New York financial trader of European origin named Daniel Ivandjiiski, Daniel admitted to being one of multiple editors that write for ZeroHedge under the moniker, a theory that makes sense considering the vast, prolific, and endless output of the blog.

Robert “Bob” Paulson: “Have you heard about the guy that invented this thing?”

Narrator: “Well, yeah, actually I uh…”

Bob: “I hear all kinds of things.”

Narrator: “Yeah.”

Bob: “Supposedly he was born in a mental institution, and he sleeps only one hour a night. He’s a great man, do you know about Tyler Durden?”

As one blogger puts it:

“This guy is a machine.

I’m a blogger, and a fairly prolific one, so I know a machine when I see one.

‘Tyler Durden’, the anonymous blogger who writes ZeroHedge, is writing night and day and breaking huge, market-moving stories left and right.

I’m blown away.”

One big story broken by ZeroHedge, and just one of many reasons “Tyler Durden” is definitely one of the rebels in the fight against financial fraud and monetary tyranny, was the flash trading happening at Goldman Sachs. ZeroHedge’s coverage drew the attention of US Senate Finance Committee member Chuck Schumer and prompted the SEC to consider a ban on the practice. For enlightening readers with alternative analysis and original reporting that exposes the illogic and deception of our present global monetary regime, we award Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge this week’s accolade. Keep up the great work!

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

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