Hey, Wall Street: If You Want Efficiency, Buy a Blender

It is a supreme irony that a man whose ideas could have helped us avoid the most recent financial crisis now shares a Nobel with one whose work went a long way toward making it possible.

The two economists -- Robert Shiller of Yale University and Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago, winners of the 2013 memorial prize in economics -- are both admirers of the power of financial markets. As Shiller rightly argues, finance is a technology that can be just as beneficial as any other, from electric power to the Internet. Without finance, how would we pool our collective resources to fund the vast undertakings required for medical research, oil exploration or even education? How would we insure ourselves against the staggering costs of earthquakes and other natural catastrophes? How many of us would ever own a house?