The Chinese stock market shook the world on January 4, the first trading day in 2016, by implementing a circuit breaker mechanism (which the officials were forced to abandon later) in the A-Share market, that was triggered twice the very first day it was introduced. This led to the suspension of trading on the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets until closing time.
The volatility of the Chinese stock market has produced a domino effect, causing markets in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Australia, the United States and Europe to all plunge. This anxious atmosphere at the beginning of the year that sends tremors through people hearts, reminds me of Robert Harris’s book The Fear Index.
Robert Harris is a favourite author of mine. He graduated from Cambridge University and worked as a reporter, specializing in historical topics. I have read many of his works, including Fatherland (1992), Pompeii (2003), Imperium (2006) and the Ghost (2007).
In The Fear Index, an American scientist Dr. Alex Hoffmann and an investment banker partner to invent a unique artificial intelligence system VIXAL-4, used to gather information from all sectors and calculate the probabilities of all matters, as well as human beings' level of fear. During the trial stage, the system is deployed to predict the movement of the financial markets and is surprisingly accurate. Dr Hoffmann and his partner then decide to set up a hedge fund in Geneva, Switzerland and become billionaires with the assistance of the system. Nevertheless, the scientist starts to encounter some fairly strange incidents, some of which almost lead to his demise. As a result, Dr Hoffmann is determined to investigate the issue, which takes him down a road of no return…
I believe that The Fear Index is, to some extent, the modern day Frankenstein. Both depict how a genius scientist is slain by the monster he creates. I am not really familiar but throughout the years, I have witnessed the financial storm in the early 2000's, the burst of the dot-com bubble, the 2008 financial crisis caused by the US subprime mortgage crisis and 'minibond' incident, as well as the recent instability of the Chinese A-Share and Hong Kong stock market. The strong feeling I have is that the banking and financial systems that were once set up by human beings to gather wealth and to invest have evolved, due to the greed and fear of humans, into an increasingly complex mechanism that is not even understood by most of us, and might eventually come back to bite us.
Stepping into the world of 2016, the future of the human species seems even gloomier. Politics, the economy, religion, medicine and health, all aspects are haunted by the underlying predicament. Despite continuous technological innovations and sufficient talent and capital, human beings appear to be facing more tough problems than ever before. Fears are grabbing hold of people and the future is increasingly confusing. The root of all these things might be our desire to play God. We think we can control all, but fail to realize how little we are.
Rumor has it that the namesake movie of The Fear Index will be directed by British director Paul Greengrass, who also directed The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. But I think we don't need to see the movie. It is frightening enough just to switch on the television every night to watch the news and see the reality of the world.
