We have even managed to make the study of literature arcane.

But I also wanted to follow the hundreds of arcane and obscure laws that are in the Bible.

But I also wanted to follow the hundreds of arcane and obscure laws that are in the Bible.

I was still stuck in the old world of a whole bunch of boffins sitting together in a room and issuing yet another arcane statement.

There is a carbon calculator. Participant Productions convened, with my active involvement, the leading software writers in the world on this arcane science of carbon calculation to construct a consumer friendly carbon calculator.

Other academic disciplines have looked rather smugly at the public humiliation of their colleagues in economics. The non mathematical appear to have their revenge, as the perils of over reliance on complex symbolic notation and arcane formulae are relentlessly exposed.

But turning everyone into a capitalist may be as impossible as the communist dream of turning everyone into an inspired socialist worker. Interest in the arcane principles of finance has always been an inclination particular to people who love to pore over numerical tables and study mathematical formulas.

What is true of cars applies to the economy arcane issues are for specialists. Yet in recent years, topics about which most people had never heard or cared for example, securitization, credit default swaps, and the European payment system known as Target 2 have imposed themselves on public debate, forcing ordinary people to grapple with their intricacies.

Consider Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi replaced Mario Monti, the Commission's most successful and effective member, with a politician enmeshed in the arcane games of Italian party politics. Berlusconi's interest is clear he wants someone he can call and ask to look after Italy's interests be it a forbidden government loan to Alitalia or some other favor.

Just a short time ago, the IMF seemed relegated to a sustained period of irrelevance as it failed to modernize either its euro centric political representation or its arcane government to government lending facilities. Suddenly, the Fund has moved to center stage as the only agency seemingly capable of stemming the vicious downward spiral that is currently seizing emerging market stocks and bonds.