Over and over

It's not true that life is one d---- thing after another; it's one d---- thing over and over.

~Edna St Vincent Millay

Events in the financial sphere would seem to bear that out. In 1929 it was stocks and in 2008 it is derivatives. In between we have Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's warning just ahead of the 90s' burst: "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?"

How do we know indeed. But the question itself seems almost quaint, throwback to a time when "asset" had a different meaning. Dr. Michael Greenberger, who served on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, testifies of a new financial culture in which the concept of "asset" has transmogrified from a real value backed up by something real in the world, to a handful of bets --- about whether houses will keep appreciating, or whether people will pay their mortgages.

Greenberger raises the question, "Should we have an economy based on whether people make good or bad bets? Or should we have an economy where people build companies, create manufacturing, advance our society, and make it productive?"

The thing that's "over and over" about this deal is that the biggest losers are at the bottom of the food chain.