In other words, it was strongly believed by everyone involved that the efficient markets theory provided what can only be described as an informational free lunch. For the cost of establishing a market in traded securities (which is something that an advanced capitalist society would have to do anyway, in order to provide the convenience to investors of being able to convert their claims on long-term investment projects into liquid funds), we could gain, Ginsu-knives-style, a Delphic oracle that would ... give s free information about the future and about cash flows. Belief in the existence of this sort of informational free lunch, by the way, is at the heart of James’s book “The Wisdom of Crowds”, and will also be at the heart of my review essay on it, which I am still procrastinating. Suffice it to say that the use of the phrase “free lunch” is intended to make the reader suspicious as to whether one should uncritically accept such a miraculous and politically convenient (for a number of people) piece of theorising as the efficient markets concept.