The markets leap up and plunge down. They soar and drop again with the sense of a drunken gnat. If people handled friendship and love the way they do their financial affairs, with sublime incompetence, the National Rifle Association would have a firing pin in your pocket with a six-pack of clips instead of a cell phone dangling from your belt. Undertakers would promote Valentine’s Day and own a controlling interest in Hallmark Cards and quality chocolate. The precipitous downslide in the last quarter of 2008 made perfect sense. Call it a correction if you will. The alternative is to suggest that someone with common sense tackled the derivatives market, read the paper and the appendices and footnotes the way they should, and found the whole apparatus was made of spider web, gossamer and tissue paper. It was all gush and no guts. As your depressing brother-in-law used to say, the one who last smiled in 1987, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. We all know that there’s nothing unusual in the bursting of illusions. Happens all the time, even in fairy tales, viz the Emperor’s New Clothes. But the stock markets’ ups and downs in March are something quite different. They reflect the fears of the haunted. In them there’s no more rational analysis than an astrologer applies to the stars. We’ve returned to the leadership of the financial wizards who got us into this mess. They look at the lines on the page and extrapolate or try to find patterns. Forget the real world, it’s the paper and ink that leads them by the nose. Don’t be misled, folks. There’s a whole industry that desperately wants the banks to crash and panic to rule our cities. Maybe their parents didn’t pay enough attention to them as children. But keep a grip and watch the real world. When dire straits become old news, suddenly optimism will come back into fashion. Remember where you heard it.