Here is the economist John K. Galbraith making two more excellent points about the popularity and insanity of speculation.  He describes two reasons why after a bubble bursts — as it did in a spectacular fashion that echoed around the world in 2008 — the real reasons for the crash are completely ignored.

The first reason is that we have very little trouble casting blame on one or two people, but have considerable difficulty blaming an entire community – like the financial community or the economists.  We simply can’t bring ourselves to believe that so many people could be so wrong, and also that people with so much money could be so foolish.

The second reason is that we have come to believe in the invisible hand, laissez faire  of the market as an orthodox Truth. The cause of crashes are never identified as the speculative behavior that precedes them in spite of the…