I think someone - probably me, when I finish this damn book - needs to write something about what value really is, and how people perceive prosperity.

Everyone knows it's not about rational actors, or even - particularly - about credit and useful things happening because of credit.

We have an interesting situation now where stock market value seems to exist even though economic activity doesn't, much.

This makes no sense - supposedly.

I think in fact it makes perfect sense - but only if you understand what's really being traded, what the motivation for trade is, and why what happens to people who don't trade on the markets doesn't actually matter a damn.

(Except in the limit, when they start starving, rioting and burning things down.)

From there it's possible - eventually - to create new theories of value that are less subjective than the ones we have now.