When the weather gets bad, I don't think we should all start praying to the Sun God for good weather. For the same reason, I don't think anyone -- and especially not financial advisors -- should advocate superstitious thinking concerning money, either. But it's being done, all around.

The Secret, for instance, is a book designed to teach you self-delusion and magical thinking.

Suze Orman, too, teaches a kind of magical thinking in relation to finances. She knows better, but decides to give no respect to her audiences, and tells them that sending money out into the world (like giving to charity) makes money come back to you. She actually describes this as readjusting money's behavior towards you. Right, because money thinks and has an attitude towards you….

This bothers me for 2 reasons. Not only does it eat away at our ability to think rationally, it undermines the charitable impulse. Suze Orman is giving her audiences the same reasoning that the prosperity gospel preachers give to their audiences -- which is a line of utter, shitty, self-interest. The prosperity gospel teaches the idea that you should give and be kind in order to get benefits from it. That God will pay you back if you do this.

It's a market relationship with the universe.

There was a TED lecture I listened to the other day, found when I was looking for something else. It was about this market-society thing increasing in the U.S.
Found it: Michael Sandel whyweshouldnttrustmarketswith

He ends the talk on an important note. I love the TED lectures. The last one I watched was mostly over my head, but interesting still. It was about algorithms, the kind used in both stock market trading and online marketing. The speaker told the story of the book The Making Of A Fly, which, due to algorithms used by the sellers, zoomed up to a price of $23 million -- without anyone buying or selling the book. It was mostly 2 sellers, whose sales algorithms caused them to check the other guy's price and continually adjust to it. This was a couple of years ago. I never heard about it at the time.