Diamonds and gold, well, yeah, it pays for a few people to hit the rocks with pickaxes, but it doesn't actually bring a great deal of wealth except in Botswana where it has been very well used.

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Despite the uncertainty, Bricken says companies are still rushing to join what she calls the "secondary risk market, " the modern-day equivalent of Seattle's early entrepreneurs selling pickaxes, supplies, and services to prospectors seeking their fortune during the Yukon Gold Rush of the 1890s.

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When Kenya's ill-equipped and untrained police arrived at the scene, carrying truncheons and rifles instead of spades and pickaxes, Nairobians, often thought selfish and corrupt by other Kenyans, contemptuously swept the police aside as they plunged in to free victims from the rubble.

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To sum up John Maynard Keynes, it can even make sense to bury money in bottles, so that miners, and the suppliers of their pickaxes and overalls, and those who sell food and materials to those suppliers can, in turn, benefit from the circulation of money that they dig up.

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