Financial markets are the machines in which much of human welfare is decided; yet we know more about how our car engines work than about how our global financial system functions. We lurch from crisis to crisis. In a networked world, mayhem in one market spreads instantaneously to all others—and we have only the vaguest of notions how this happens, or how to regulate it.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Financial markets are the machines in which much of human welfare is decided; yet we know more about how our car engines work than about how our global financial system functions. We lurch from crisis to crisis. In a networked world, mayhem in one market spreads instantaneously to all others—and we have only the vaguest of notions how this happens, or how to regulate it." in the context of "Benoît Mandelbrot, The (Mis)Behavior of Markets (2004, 2008) Ch. 13, p. 254–255." to mean that wisdom is timeless.