Nietzsche and The Financial Crash

Nietzshe's theory of the 'will to power' - that the driving force and overarching motivation in human is power.

That is: ambition to higher social standing, more income (or more than your neighbor, because $80K in a neighborhood of $60K's is a lot better than $200K in a neighborhood of $1M's), power struggling with spouse over trivialities, absolute control over life and decisions, avoiding the phrase 'I don't know', and gaining power over that which we don't understand via explanation (even of that that is beyond grasp) because we'll be damned if something can fool us, etc.

For example, our blatant non-acceptance of that which may be chaotic and indifferent for what it is - chaotic and indifferent. We "control" the unexplainables via an application of order or a possible explanation, regardless of validity. The story has always held up better than the facts for us - for example, religion to explain the creation of man.

Applying to the financial industry provides many immediate examples; social standing and highest possible income being the easiest to apply...but also two more subtle; 1. news wires explaining movement in the market (e.g., the DJIA was up today on...[insert some piece of information with no proven causation to market movement]) and 2. the models used to explain future price movements, to value derivative securities, or to provide a measure of risk inherent in a portfolio...

Many such models exist and they are used, by many, without hesitation or thought of limitation in explaining an ever-increasingly convoluted reality via discrete formulae. It's a riot, really. Innumerable value-to-asset relationships are held up by trust in the efficacy of that which is known to be severely limited.

So, so, the human mind, again, encounters something that cannot be considered and solved in an efficient manner or perhaps at all and then when offered explanation - however weak or limited - effectively replaces itself with a close but still fictitious representation of the, still, unexplained reality and trusts it to the bitter end...literally.

"The success of the theory of options valuation, the best model economics can offer, is the story of a Platonically simple theory, taken more seriously than it deserves and then used extravagantly, with hubris, as a crutch to human thinking" (Emanuel Derman)