an orchard of Bloomberg boxes

I am convinced of the value of monetary liquidity.  This is a neutral value, in the sense that it its goodness is nothing but an avoidance of cost: the cost to individuals and enterprise of capital being unavailable.  To the extent we avoid it we remain at the starting position, rather than behind it.  That is valuable.

And I'm not optimistic that we could regulate what people invest in, or the forms investment may take, to the point of having a clean and simple menu of options that meet with general approval.  Or rather, that we could, but that the cost of this would, in illiquidity and diversion of greed to enterprise and the illicit, exceed the benefits.

Yes the markets are where the scoundrels are, and we can, do, and must keep cleaning the markets.  We must regulate and disclose and interfere and devote some of our best minds to this endless janitorial work.  But we can't fully clean up - or even nearly clean up - the markets.  We need them too much.

Because illiquidity would result from such the restrictions necessary to a total cleanup, and greed would divert rather than die.  The greed, the thin, logical, oily greed, rampant in the secondary securities market, would simply open shop and concentrate its vices there, or move under the table, to the extent it doesn't already (much as it already does in real estate or natural resources).

Greed is deathless in human affairs, although it can be squeezed, herded, diminished and made to do some productive work.  This is the great lesson of the US corporate bankruptcy system, which is a virtuous engine powered by channeling the driving steam of vice.  There is much more to so great a machine, but that is how it is driven.  It is beautiful, and sad, and works.  To an extent greed serves this role in the markets, but there is more steam and less machine.  It is not an iron judicial engine but an open rollicking hall.  Vast work is done, but with vaster waste.

On earth, in commerce, that is often the best we can hope for.  To make hell the downstairs kitchen of heaven.  To feed cool heaven with the cooking of hell.  To make that hellish kitchen a place where as few as possible are held to labor and instead a place where the greedy or vicious bring themselves and toil.