Precient

Quote from Terry Pratchet’s Going Postal, copyright 2004 (some people might consider it a spoiler)

It wasn’t until almost dawn that the somber men arrived. They were older and fatter and better–but now showily, never showily–dressed, and moved with the gravity of serious money. They were financiers, too, richer than kings (who are often quite poor), but hardly anyone in the city outside their circle knew them or would notice them in the street, They spoke quietly to Cheeseborough as to one who’d suffered a bereavement, and then talked among themselves, and sued little gold propelling pencils in neat little notebooks to make figures dance and jump through hoops. Then quiet agreement was reached and hands were shaken, which in this circle carried infinitely more weight than any written contract. The first domino had been steadied. The pillars of the world ceased to tremble. The Credit Bank would open in the morning, and when it did so, bills would be honored, wages would be paid, the city would be fed.

They’d saved the city with gold more easily, at that point, than any hero could have managed with steel. But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fatansy of gold, the fairly dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever–provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look.

This is known as Finance.

–Terry Pratchet, Going Postal

I think someone failed to remember they weren’t supposed to look.