It may well be a symptom of imminent global economic doom, but currency trading is the Next Big Thing. In fact, it’s already the best craps game in town.

Two and a half trillion quid changes hands around the world every day.

The sum (says BBCNews sex-symbol Bobby Peston) is equivalent to the entire output of the global economy being traded once a fortnight.

What does this tell us about the markets allegedly charged with financing capitalism? Not a lot that’s new, actually: but it does confirm that they spend too much of their time thinking about stuff which has nothing to do with the greater good. And that even when thinking about important considerations, they suffer from arse/elbow relationship confusion.

Further evidence to support this hypothesis came in during the day:

The Athens stock market was up 1% – despite the nation’s manufacturing sector showing a contraction again in August.

The first fall in US private sector payrolls since January has not been able to shift traders from the belief that a fresh month deserves a sunny disposition….’any suggestion that things are not quite as bad as feared was likely to be clung to like a long-lost comfort blanket’ opined the FT.

The S&P 500 rose 2.7%, despite the fact that private-sector jobs in the U.S. fell by 10,000 last month, as only large companies hired workers. Why did it rise? Well, the Dow dropped 4.3% in August — ‘the worst August since 2001 — so it’s possible traders are just in a bullish mood to start the new month’ the Wall Street Journal suggested.

Another ‘buy’ sign was alleged to be the deceleration of China’s manufacturing output fall. My immediate reaction to this rationale was ‘And you seriously think this wasn’t created by Beijing?’, so I rang a few people more intimately involved than I. They concurred.

There’s a woman down our street and she gives good tealeaves. My wife swears by a medium in North Wales whose predictions never fail to enlighten her future. That octopus in Germany has a sensational track record in calling the future right. And I have an eccentric friend who can bankrupt the bookies on the basis of rat gizzards. And you know what? They’re all deluded – but none more so than the day-to-day Bourse traders looking for A Sign as if they might be extras in A Life of Brian.

In that context it is in fact entirely rational to have the odd harmless punt on currencies, if only because there are obviously correct things to buy and sell in that sector. For example: sell the dollar, for it is merely the currency of the world’s biggest commercial player and most stable democracy. And buy the Japanese Yen, for is it not the legal tender of the nation with the longest-standing depression in history? And if you want a fall-back currency of last resort, why not Sterling – after all, it has a Monarch’s head on the notes…and the largest debt per capita of any developed nation.

It’s very easy sometimes to be too clever by half in satirising the financing of contemporary capitalism. So maybe I should be more straightforward: if this is the best way to run a railroad, then my name is Cochise, and I’m hoping to repel the Iron Horse with these new darker smoke signals sold to me by Sitting Bull. Listen, he won at Little Big Horn, so he must know where it’s at.