From the tech and telecom craze of the late 1990s to house price escalation from 2002 to 2006, asset bubbles are a predictable consequence of black box finance. Insiders who understand their true dynamics can sell at the top, reaping enormous windfalls. But their gains represent “a claim on future wealth that neither had been nor was to be produced.” By creating the illusion of enormous value in securities like CDOs and CDSes, black box financiers make their own fees (ranging from a fraction of a percent to over 30 percent in the case of some hedge funds) seem trivial in comparison. When the mirage dissipates, the desert of zero productive gains becomes clear. But in this harsh new economic reality, the money “earned” by the speculators has all the more purchasing power, arrayed against the smaller incomes of those who did not take advantage of the bubble.