Short answer: All Of Them.

Long answer: Some are more responsible than others.

For example, there is Charles and David Koch employee, Stephen Moore.

After Friday's dramatic 666 point sell-off, Moore was concerned that mom and pop small investors might sell and leave rich people holding the bag if the market crashed on Monday...which ultimately it did.

So he got on CNN.



After the market plunge on Friday, Moore was on air at CNN by Saturday afternoon urging the little guy to stand pat. When queried about the Friday stock market selloff Moore stated: “Well, I want to try to walk people off the ledge here…I mean, it was a terrible day, no question about it, 670 points. A lot of points to lose on the Dow. But remember the Dow has been up 6,000 points or so over the last 14 months or so. So it’s given up about 10 percent of the gains. Look, the worst thing people could do right now is go out and sell their stock, especially if you are in a retirement fund, a 401(k). Just you know, in fact, I would say, you know, a lot of times you want to buy on the dips because stocks fell, and I would anticipate next week they will go up.”

Mission accomplished!

Don't hold it against the financial media.

Their job is to sell financial products, even if they have to lie to you.

To give you an idea, consider these two headline that were posted within an hour of each other.

Marketwatch: Stock-market volatility surges, but VIX traders aren’t panicking yet

Business Insider: The stock market's fear gauge spikes the most on record

Guess which headline is accurate?

Yep, the second one.



The Cboe Volatility Index — or VIX — spiked 84% on the day, its biggest single-day increase of all time, according to data going back to 1990.

The VIX reflects expectations for volatility in the S&P 500, and trades inversely to the benchmark roughly 80% of the time.

Let's put that in perspective: the VIX - which measures fear in all Street traders - spiked more today than when terrorists were flying airplanes into Manhattan skyscrapers, or when Lehman Brothers went under.

...but traders aren't panicking.

I should point out that "traders" might give you the wrong impression, because we aren't talking about actual people.



While it’s impossible to say for sure what was at work when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as 1,597 points, the worst part of the downdraft felt to many like the machines run amok. For 15 harrowing minutes just after 3 p.m. in New York a deluge of sell orders came so fast that it seemed like nothing breathing could’ve been responsible.

...“We are proactively calling up our clients and discussing that a 1,600-point intraday drop is due more to algorithms and high-frequency quant trading than macro events or humans running swiftly to the nearest fire exit,” said Jon Ulin, of Ulin & Co. Wealth Management in Boca Raton, Fla., in an email.

Oh, well. That's OK then.

You know what caused it. It was the machines, not the people.

So you are going to turn them off now, right?

No? You aren't going to turn them off?

Then why the FUCK would what you just said reassure me?!?

“What was frightening was the speed at which the market tanked,” said Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, Birmingham, Alabama-based senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management, who helps oversee about $17 billion. “The drop in the morning was caused by humans, but the free-fall in the afternoon was caused by the machines. It brought back the same reaction that we had in 2010, which was ‘What the heck is going on here?”

It may never be clear what accelerated the tumble -- people still aren’t sure what caused the flash crash on May 6, 2010.

Except we do know what caused, or at least was a major culprit in the 2010 flash crash - high-frequency traders.

You might recall the Michael Lewis' book Flash Boys.

In one sentence, high-frequency trading is front-running. Which in theory is illegal.

The financial media immediately revealed the truth to the public.

Forbes: Flash Boys And High Frequency Trading: Trust Markets, Not Regulators

CNBC: High-frequency traders can’t front-run anyone

Oh, right. They denied everything, even the obvious.

The good news is that the financial media, the analysts, and everyone else is consistent.