In today's OpEd section of NYTimes.com, you'll find a column by Richard Dooling entitled:

The Rise of the Machines -- How the philosophies of a physicist, a wizard, & a serial killer warned us of this financial crisis.

It's really a great read.  Yours in Him, Deb 

Thanks for the heads up. Here's the link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12dooling.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

 I'm not sure if I really gained any insight from the article.

Here's the quote that makes me scratch my head:

"As the current financial crisis spreads (like a computer virus) on the earth’s nervous system (the Internet), it’s worth asking if we have somehow managed to colossally outsmart ourselves using computers. After all, the Wall Street titans loved swaps and derivatives because they were totally unregulated by humans. That left nobody but the machines in charge."

 That's a pretty bold statement to make, and he does not go into any depth as to why that assertion is true.  Right now our computers are still very very dumb.  They follow rules set up by humans, and they don't make up rules on their own.  To place the cause as computers for today's crisis would be like blaming a 3 year old for a flat tire.  There is no correlation.

Maybe not a correlation, but with the ease of computer investing and computer accounting, they surely must have thought it would have made their activities so much more easier to accomplish and keep track of. Just because they could do it doesn't mean ethically that they should have. But they did, because they could. As long as everyone had the idea that some loser will take the fall for what they do, there were no limits to what they would do. Extreme Hubris is a term that comes to mind. Edey