Hey everybody, I’m traveling today, and will be out of pocket for most of the day. Please be patient; I’ll approve comments when I can. Meanwhile, here’s a really interesting post sent in by reader Don L., asking whether or not we have reached “a financial singularity.” Excerpt:
Have we reached the point where our financial markets are so complex that we no longer understand how they really work? And if so, how can we manage what we don’t
understand? And I say “we” because the world’s largest, most complex finance houses now have the explicit political support of the G20, and thus the de facto political support of 2/3 of all the world’s citizens.
“Ben Bernanke, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
Clare Krishan 
MH - Secular Misanthropist 
yes sir 
Mr. Patrick 
Liam 
When was this time when we understood how financial markets worked? Did we understand it when the Great Depression hit? Prior to the Great Depression, the US had financial crises in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1896, 1901, 1907, and 1910. Then we had the great depression. The really anomalous event of the 20th century was that from 1929 to 2000, we had no serious financial crises in the United States. Part of the reason for this might be that we heavily constrained the behavior of financial institutions, keeping them simple and boring enough to effectively regulate, but it is not as though the complexity of the market is a new thing.