a Utopian yearning............

     The spirit of speculation is anarchic, irreverent, and antihierarchic.  It loves freedom, detests cant, and abhors restrictions.  From the tulip Colleges of the seventeenth century to the Internet investment clubs of the late twentieth century, speculation has established itself as the most demotic of economic activities.  Although profoundly secular, speculation is not simply about greed.  The essence of speculation remains a Utopian yearning for freedom and equality which counterbalances the drab rationalistic materialism of the modern economic system with its inevitable inequalities of wealth.  Throughout its many manifestations, the speculative mania has always been, and remains to this day, the Carnival of Capitalism, a "Feast of Fools."

-Edward Chancellor, Devil Take The Hindmost:  A History Of Financial Speculation