About the complexity of financial markets

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

Henry Ford.

In Michael Moore's last movie, Capitalism: A love story, two important arguments were made about the complexity of financial markets: (1) the smartest students do not become any more engineers or scientists, but go work for financial companies (or become lawyers), (2) where they use their intelligence to create financial products and derivatives that a handful of people only can understand.

Following the idea of Darwin's evolution, there is a strong incentive for having the mechanisms of financial markets to be purposely muggy and incomprehensible. As Henry Ford recognizes, if the rest of us would understand, there would be a revolution. This hidden complexity does not do any good to the rest of the society, whatever your own economic or social values are. This needs to be changed.