WWB Wind, water, birds stochastic natural sounds composed of lots of individual random events, all of it very healthy, all of it sound that we evolved to over the years.

But these are the benefits of high finance as they apply to the ideal world of economists that is, a world of rational utilitarian actors who are skilled calculators of expected utility under uncertainty, who are masters of dynamic programming, and who breathe stochastic calculus in their daily life. We do not live in such a world.

We all have good reason to be grateful that US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is an expert on the Great Depression and the authorities flawed policy responses then, rather than in the finer points of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium theory. As a result, he was ready to adopt unconventional measures when the crisis erupted, and was persuasive in influencing his colleagues.