b'To reconnect people, place and planet at this moment in history, we need a myth that puts finance in its place.The economic story of the 20th century was shaped by financialization. Financialization is the epic, demythologizing mythologizer of the Age of Ones and Zeros. The first hedge fund was set up in the 1940s, reports Niall Ferguson in The Ascent of Money, and as recently as 1990, there were just 610 of them, with $38 billion under management. There are now over seven thousand, with $1.9 trillion under management. 18That was in 2007; today, more than 10,000 hedge funds have over $3 trillion under management. At the inception of the Great Recession in 2008, the derivatives market was valued at $600 trillion; today, it exceeds $1 quadrillion. 19All of which was enabled by and tethered to unprec-edented exponential increases in computer power and the speed with which information can be processed and transmitted. The only thing strong enough to justify such extreme levels of financial-ization is myth. The only thing strong enough to counter such extreme levels of financialization is myth. 18 The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson (Penguin Press, New York, 2008), p. 519 A quadrillion is a thousand trillion. In 2018, this was more than 10 times larger than the total global economy (global economic output, or the GDP of the entire world economy). A quadrillion is such a big number that the tricks explaining how big a trillion is (you know, such as if Jesus had borrowed a trillion dollars and was paying back $1 million a day, he still wouldnt have paid it back, that kind of thing) arent good enough to bring a quadril-lion dollars down to earth. There are roughly a quadrillion ants living on the earth.68'