Pretend, for a minute, that you're a money manager in today's manipulated world. You understand that most of what's happening is the result of governments and central banks forcing down interest rates and pumping up asset prices. You don't trust this process but since “the markets are recovering” you've felt compelled to play along, putting your clients into a standard mix of stocks, bonds and cash.

But you're not feeling the love. With stocks outperforming bonds and cash, your blended portfolios have failed to match the S&P 500 and your clients are asking snarky questions like “What exactly am I paying you for when I could do better by just buying an ETF?”

So finally, as equity prices march ever higher and governments around the world reiterate their promises of unlimited cheap money from here to eternity, you throw up your hands and give the clients what they want, loading up on growth stocks, especially from the hottest emerging markets.

Then, out of the blue, the dollar spikes, oil tanks and the world tips into chaos. u.s. stocks have their worst week in three years, emerging markets collapse, and clients who last month demanded double-digit gains now start begging for reassurance that their savings won't just melt away.

You, of course, have no idea what to tell them. Your training was all about markets and cash flows and how to analyze them. And today there are no markets. Instead of millions of more-or-less rational, self-interested producers and consumers, all you see when you look out the window is a handful of large, politically-motivated entities playing games with make-believe currency to get through the next election cycle or bonus period. Fundamentals like P/E ratios and dividend yields offer no insight into what might happen, and traditional asset allocation formulas, based as they are on the assumption of free capital flows and rational actors, give results that are random at best and exactly the opposite of what was intended at worst.