Abstract
Frankfurt's (2005. On bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press) having given the term ‘bullshit’ philosophical respectability is quite timely for an understanding of the financial services industry. There is no doubt a preponderance of financial bullshitting nowadays, much more in fact than in the not so distant past. Some of this might indeed be as harmful as Frankfurt claims bullshit can be. On the other hand, in financial services as in many other human activities, bullshit is not only inevitable, but it also performs a variety of useful functions for individuals and for society. As a species, we may not have evolved to the point of making optimal probabilistic decisions in the stock market, as behavioral finance consistently illustrates, but we have certainly evolved enough to bullshit about it. We have also evolved the ability to detect financial bullshit, which may serve to mitigate its deleterious consequences.
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