“If you want to keep monetary policy non-political, you’ve got to continue to let our side rob you blind.”
Bingo. Financial markets can effectively create real wealth, if they cause useful resources to be distributed more efficiently than they otherwise would be. On the other hand, they can also be used to create huge amounts of imaginary wealth, which can then be exchanged for real wealth. The crooks in the markets are unfortunately very good at convincing people that imaginary wealth which is discovered to be, well, imaginary, represented real wealth up until the moment of such discovery.
The situation is somewhat analogous to a safe which has a deposit slot in the front, but whose bottom was drilled out by a thief. As long as people keep putting money in the safe but don't open it, it will be regarded as holding all the money that was put in. If on some particular day the safe is opened and found to be empty, people will perceive all the money as having been stolen on that day, notwithstanding the fact that the safe may have been empty for years. Even worse, many people would believe that since the act of opening the safe would destroy all the "money" that was in it, one can prevent such destruction by not opening the safe, and simply continuing to deposit money as though all is well.
ROFL