"My fear...is that the financial system itself has somehow slipped all human control -- that it has become the preserve of a profoundly anti-democratic, super-rich elite, and that it girdles the planet like some alien entity from an H.G. Wells novel. The digitised financial machine does not work for us: we work for the machine. And I do not believe that our political leaders have the faintest idea how to bring it under control."

-- Robert Harris

Indeed, we work for the machine, and "our political leaders" are selected to ensure its continued operation. The entire system, which appears chaotic to outsiders, is already under control -- including the occasional episodes of "panic" and "collapse".

"It was in Western Europe especially that the conception of the organized and disciplined World-State as a revolutionary objective ultimately grew to its full proportions. At first it grew obscurely... It needed the financial storm of the years 1928 and 1929 and the steadily progressive collapse of the whole world's economic life, of which this storm was the prelude, to give the World-State prophets the courage of their convictions."

-- H.G. Wells, "The Shape of Things to Come", 1933