Such a strange tale, it must be true...

This article should give us all pause, encourage humility, and discourage hubris.

It's the first-person account of the obscure geek who wrote the software that allow banks and brokerages to turn all manner of financial trash into AAA-rated securities.

It wasn't that everyone was making money hand-over-fist; it was that everyone developed a belief that they were bullet-proof, that nothing could go wrong in the system they had built.

If we think that we 'obscure' people can't have an enormous impact, for good or ill, on the world around us, this man's story should cure us of that particular illusion.