With such enormous bucks devoted to trading in oil and other commodities, the distortions that they cause have been exacerbated.

Some hedge fund managers have made big bucks trading oil futures - George Soros is one.

Humiliating events have a way of capturing the public's imagination. So it has been since antiquity, when gladiators were pitted against each other and the legions of Spartacus were crucified in endless rows on the way to Rome.

Oil futures were originally created to give heating oil dealers, gas retailers, aviation companies and other businesses a method of hedging against adverse price changes. Instead, they've become just another Wall Street plaything.

MF Global used to be known as Man Financial, and it had a reasonably good reputation. It did a humdrum business placing commodities trades for fund managers as well as farmers, grain dealers and others whose livelihoods depend on the vagaries of commodity prices.

As one general said, they're devoted to each other and the cause,