[jgamman]

I don't know - pricing options using Black-Scholes uses assumptions (i think normal bell curves) that aren't exactly true and LTCM for instance went under showing that. i think the big difference between economics and physics is that maths is used in finance as 'credibility' and the mortals just assume it's correct because the wizards say it is and crank the dial up to 11 (sub-prime affected a lot of normal people). In physics, the wizards are just talking to other wizards and the mortals don't even enter the discussion (honestly, LHC is cool and all but other than a couple thousand physicists, no-one would notice if it stopped working).