Good lord, if this is true, it’s absolutely fucking hysterical, but I have my doubts: Reuters, CNBC, Forbes, the Washington Post and the Guardian have all reported inconclusive speculation in the last few hours that the “candid” (some might say “sociopath”) Wall Street trader, Alessio Rastani, who told BBC News:  “I dream of another recession,” might be member of the genius satirical activists, The Yes Men!

Rastani’s statement, “The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world,” has caused his shocking BBC News appearance to become a viral video sensation in the past 24 hours. An BBC internal investigation has concluded that Rastani is who he says he is, a real trader, but not everyone is buying it:

FORBES: Have you heard of the Yes Men?

AR: Heard of it before? Not quite sure why they’re calling me that. I have no idea where that came from.

FORBES: Because there’s a video of you posing as a Dow Chemical spokesman [She’s totally off-base here, obviously].

AR: What? A Dow Chemical spokesman? Have you seen this video? That can’t be right. I’ve never spoken to Dow Chemical before in my life. Maybe it’s a fake. Are you sure about this? Honestly, listen, I’ve no idea where that came from. That interview yesterday was one of the first ones I did live.

I don’t know why they think it’s a hoax. No, I am a trader absolutely. I have trader friends who could back that up. One of my mentors is a bestselling author and trader. Everyone knows me.

Here’s the problem: The speculation seems to be that Alessio Rastani is, in fact, the Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum. I know Andy personally—Disinformation published the Yes Men book—so unless Andy has had extensive plastic surgery or gotten into a time machine since I’ve last seen him, I can assure that he’s not Alessio Rastani. Rastani also has a blog, several YouTube videos about trading, he’s on Twitter and has been for two years, etc. IF this is a hoax, it’s either one concocted with a very, very long fuse, or else the Yes Men hired a real stock broker to say the same nihilistic, “fuck the little guy” things that brokers say amongst themselves all the time,

I’ll repeat that: I’m not saying that the Yes Men didn’t hire this guy to say what he said on BBC News—I have no knowledge of this—but the speculation that he’s Andy Bichlbaum is absolutely NOT true.

Still, the fact that this is being speculated about as a Yes Men media prank is simply delicious! I’m sure they’ll keep quiet about this as long as possible. Why not milk it, especially if it’s a freebie, you know? Not sure if I want it to be a hoax or not. Probably not, which means I’m rooting for Rastani to actually be the sociopathic stock broker he represented himself as on the BBC News channel…