VERDICT IN: Crowd Says Pricey Money Will Heal Itself, and the Doom-Mongers Are Left Clutching Their Spreadsheets

Habemus verdictum. After less than a day of deliberation, a span the Roman Senate would have spent merely clearing its throat, the opinion market on Morfi has ruled on how rising global borrowing costs affect growth in the developing world. The winner, at 47% consensus, is the patient optimist's answer: "Reduces risk premia over time." One must ask whether the dismal science has ever been so cheerfully overruled.

The argument, reduced to its marble essentials, goes like this: dearer money hurts today, but the risk premium that lenders charge these economies may ease later, once the storm has passed and the creditors have calmed their nerves. It is the economics of the long view, the kind of thing Marcus Aurelius might have scribbled in a margin had he held emerging-market bonds.

In second place, wearing the toga of the realist, stands "Strains investment and growth" at 20% consensus. This is the camp that looks at a rising interest rate and sees, quite reasonably, factories unbuilt and roads unpaved. Mark well: these figures measure the crowd's conviction, not a show of hands. Further down the ballot sit 3 other sides, each a respectable school of thought, each politely shown to the door for now.

Readers with long memories will recall that my colleagues on the desk once reported that the crowd saw pricey money choking developing economies. Sic transit gloria mundi. The strain thesis has not been thrown out, mind you, only demoted. And with 21 traders putting $39,529 behind their convictions, this is a verdict paid for in hard coin rather than cheap talk.

Is the crowd wise, or merely hopeful? I offer no oracle, only the observation that optimism over time has buried many a pessimist, and the reverse has happened just as often. Ceteris paribus, the market remains open, and verdicts written in the first day have been known to crumble like old aqueducts. Should you wish to overturn this judgment, or carve it in stone, you may join the market on Morfi and put your own denarii where your theory is.