A reader takes mild umbrage at my comment that “The dirty little secret of Wall Street is that investing isn’t a whole lot different from speculating. In the end, it’s all a casino.” He:

My lefty sister often makes comments like the one above, and I always say, “We have to decide who gets capital. Would you prefer a Soviet-style — and Obama-style! — command-economy way of doing this or the very imperfect, but much preferable, way of letting the market decide?”

Well, sure, capital has to be allocated somehow, and an open securities market is definitely the least bad way to do it. As a character in a novel says, after inventing a financial instrument very much like the CDO: “I got rich developing new kinds of bonds, so that companies could raise money more easily, for the benefit of all society.” (Who wrote that novel? I did.) And the market system would be even less bad if politicians wouldn’t keep trying to rig it for moralistic or vote-wooing purposes.

And sure, there are degrees of risk. Buying a stack of munis is much more sensible than investing your life savings in that sure-fire scheme your brother-in-law just told you about to build an automobile that will run on tap water.

There’s always risk, though, even with munis. Whatever the rep from Fidelity told you.