The world awoke one morning to find that trillions of dollars in equity and investments had simply disappeared. The problem: it was trillions of dollars that had been created through financial magic and like magic, it was an illusion. Seeking to avert a total financial meltdown, the U.S. Treasury responded with an unprecedented bailout of banks, brokerage houses and insurance companies. But the fundamental issues were never addressed: the smoke and mirrors that Financial Wizards have created from New York to Moscow and within every capital in the world. This book is not a treatise; it is a fable which attempts to show how financial concepts and interpretations can evolve. But what is true, is that those who believed themselves to be experts, failed to see what they had created. Their decisions, their beliefs created a crisis that came within days of destroying us all. There is no doubt that another crisis will follow. How large or small, will be determined by what we have learned, and if we are willing to control Wizards, who have failed to control themselves.