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PODCAST: Dealing with high frequency trading

Retail store are looking to get more foot traffic with cell phone charging stations. And Netflix gets Frank Underwood to lobby for them.

Author Michael Lewis, who explained the bond market in Liar’s Poker and the baseball draft in Moneyball,  says the stock market is a rigged game. His new book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, describes how high-frequency traders use special tricks to make money on other people’s trades. They do it a penny at a time, by being milliseconds faster than anybody else.

And, cell phones sleep next to us at night and travel in our pockets just about everywhere we go. All those hours reading, texting and Facebooking lead to a predictable but terrifying result: low phone battery. In this age of “I’m always available on my cell,” businesses hope to make a buck by offering a place to charge.

The Netflix hit show House of Cards might be about Washington, DC but many of the scenes are shot in Maryland. The show has been lobbying the state congress for tax breaks but their tactics aren’t going over well.

 

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