The Way We Live Now: putting our faith in pure voodoo. We actually have no idea if these "regulations" and "cutbacks" and "painful reactions to a financial crisis" will actually "help" at all. But hey, see what sticks, right?

All you kids out protesting the G-20. Do you even know what the hell regulations are coming out of there? No, nobody does. The only thing we know is, whatever it is, it won't happen for a long time, and then banks will find a way to neutralize it.

That, we're sure of.

These things are complicated. You tinker here, you tinker there, you hope it does some good. You cut the hell out of all the bus lines and hope that it inspires lazy commuters towards entrepreneurship. You send billions upon billions of dollars into the unaccountable black hole that is Kabul, and hope it does some good. You let a jock amass tens of millions of dollars, and hope he doesn't somehow go bankrupt like a god damn fool.

These things happen.

Because economics is not an "exact science." On the contrary. It's a "shaky science." It's the kind of science where the scientist tells you, "Well, we've run one thousand experiments, and we can definitively say that we have no fucking idea what's going on."

It's like being a doomed lobsterman. You keep putting out those pots, and pulling back nothing. Will you get lucky next time? No, you won't. But it's the not knowing that keeps you going (until you die).