I mentioned in this space some time ago that I’m a regular contributor of comments to a blog called Calculated Risk, an economics and finance blog. Many of those who comment there are perceptive, articulate, well-educated, often funny. But nearly all these attractive people have one thing in common: A fascination with money, wealth, and the intricate social machinery that governs it in our society.

Some of the people one meets on Calculated Risk are apparently successful investors. And yet there is an undercurrent of rage and disappointment to be found there. The financial system, in the view of many of them, is bent in unfair ways toward the well-placed, and those who are enriched by mismanagement and deception. The system is either out of control, or controlled by the devious. The American economy has nowhere to go but down.

I’m not competent to pass judgment on these ideas. God knows that enough of our citizens are going through rough times. Often my main task in the Calculated Risk comment box is to fence with the atheists and agnostics, and to try to preserve the idea that while money is important, there is a life after money, just as there is a life after death.

Yes, even on an economics and finance blog, there are people who go after religion. They and I have gone a few rounds.

THE LOUT

By chance and providence
(They are like adversaries on a single road)
I met a stupid gold colossus
Which all the arteries of trade bestrode 

It stood so high above me
(To see the bottom of the chin I bent)
It was with no simplicity
That thunderclouds made progress in the firmament 

But since the eyelids blinked
(And breath like vapor issued from the nose)
I said: What would you think
If chance and fate some other highway chose? 

What then would occur
(I shouted toward the sky so it could hear)
If no travelers there were
To stop and stare in wonderment and fear? 

Impossible, it said
(The low vibrations beat like distant thunder)
I am the joyfulness of dread
Which chance and the intended must pass under 

But then I saw beneath one toe
(The other was too distant to make out)
A small spring from a fountain flow
And some slight leaning forward of the giant lout