[SeeGeeWhy]

From Jan 24 - 30th's Economist, special report on finance, pp 3.

"The monument to Soviet central planning was supposed to have been a heap of surplus left boots without any right ones to match them. The great bull market of the past quarter century is commemorated by millions of empty houses with no one to buy them. Gosplan drafted workers into grim factories even if their talents would have been better suited elsewhere. Finance beguiled the bright and ambitious and put them to work in the trading rooms of Wall Street and the City of London. Much of their effort was wasted. You can only guess at what else they might have achieved."

Seemed relevant to the discussion of how the lure of top salary attracts the best - but the question is - does acting in such self interest actually best serve the needs of society? (As the efficient capital theory of economics would suggest).

I might argue that this pain in the financial system may lead to a greater understanding of why we haven't seen increased stability with greater financial sophistocation - leading to even more robust and prosperous global capital market systems.

People seem to forget that the last 25 years have been pretty damn prosperous globally. China lifts 1,000,000 people out of poverty per month... that's staggering.