[Ursa major]

It strikes me, Procrastinator, that belief in the power of The Market is a religious belief, although rarely spoken of as such.

Even some people who oppose The Market fail to point out that it is simply a combination of various human traits and urges (both good and bad) held together by a more or less simple set of rules. They, and The Market's unthinking supporters, treat it as if it's in some way "natural", i.e. something handed down to us by either God or nature. But how can trading in a derivative be considered in any way natural? How can selling something you don't own be natural (and yet this happens all the time - sometimes leading to those attempts to drive down share and commodity prices)?

If a market produces bad results, the rules should be changed to remove or alleviate the problem; sadly, though, the response of most is to shrug and do nothing. (And yet even religious leaders have changed the actions and beliefs of their religions over the years, even at the risk of offending their God.)