Nova: Mind over Money

Ladies and gentlemen, the trading floor from Antonioni's L'Eclisse.

Gurus at the University of Chicago, and elsewhere, but mostly in Chicago, believe in their intellectual bones that markets behave rationally, like sprawling, self-interested Vulcans--the logical ones, not the fire-worshippers. Because, you see, markets are like people, except they don't feel anything, which makes them superior to people. They mutate and adapt; they promote and pilfer. But they don't feel. Egocentric reason. No panic, no euphoria. Everything's cool.

Except for all the panic and euphoria. And those recurring, what are they called, bubbles, when market forces--for no apparent reason--drive prices continuously higher until somebody realizes that there isn't any actual value supporting those prices. Then we get a depression.

Economists not at the University of Chicago, who don't believe that markets are perfectly rational entities, have conducted experiments demonstrating the following unpleasant (and irrational) results:

1. People will pay twenty-eight dollars for a twenty dollar bill.
2. Professionals and lay alike will act as though their assets are increasing in value even as they know, consciously, that their assets are decreasing in value.
3. Students will sell for nine dollars a product valued at six dollars, which they obtained for free, because, now that they own it, it "means more" and therefore has more value.
4. Markets are panicky, bitchy riddles and not oracles.

As a popular-science series, Nova, for the most part, rewards its viewers with breadth but not depth. Crammed into an hour, any given episode will stimulate your interest just enough for you to ask all kinds of questions that the show, too short and too shallow, can't answer. So "Mind over Money," although tantalizing and well produced, like all its starry brethren fails to transcend the regrettable constraints of network television. But it does feature important, skeptical criticism of academics and money-movers, gurus and soothsayers. For that, and for its general entertainment value, which is pretty high, Nova, I salute you. Thank you for making the cryptic truths available to the rest of us. . . superficially. . . sort of. B-