Last week, about 30 big investors and bankers held an unusual two-hour conference call to figure out what to do about Refco, which besides commodities also handles exchange-listed stocks, currencies and private trades of the "complex financial instruments known as derivatives". Its customers are chiefly financial institutions as well as some sophisticated individual investors.

It took 36 years to build Refco Inc., but less than five days for the commodities-brokerage powerhouse to begin unraveling. What they should be saying here is that it has been double dealing its investors for 36 years rather than "building the company for 36 years." One wonders just where these outrageous phantom figures are going to go. Into the Black Hole of our 'outer space' economy?