ONE of the topics that were raised in The Manila Times' Midyear Economic Forum on Thursday was the need for the Philippines to develop its capital markets, which is an aspect of a modern economy that, in this country, could only be charitably described as 'embryonic.' However, watching capital markets in other parts of the world can quickly discourage anyone who has ideas of expanding them here because, to a significant extent, those could only be charitably described as 'insane.'

Of course, there are big and generally sensible markets for legitimate stocks, bonds and commodities, but in the past few years, there has been an incredible amount of wealth created and destroyed, sometimes in a matter of mere minutes, in things that do not make sense in any conventional way. Examples of these include meme stocks, cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency's mutant offspring, nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The amount of money flying around in these markets has, at times, rivaled that of real-world markets, which is obviously puzzling to most observers.