(diaryland) September 17, 2010 - 10:46 a.m.

I've been watching shows and movies about the fall of large companies. Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, and The Love of Money, about the fall of Lehman Brothers. They are rollercoaster rides that average people like me are supposed to sit back in the comfort of their IKEA couches and gloat over.

I guess when you watch things like that, you have to marvel at the fact that people can make money off intangible items, but also the fact that I guess it does make them real. I can see how real things turn into words which can be bundled together and traded. So many people seem to dislike this. I guess they're Platonic people because a credit default swap is like a derivative of a real object, and Plato sure hates things that riff off other things. Or maybe it's the opposite; an object in its purest form. Whatevs.