Michael Lewis's new book Flash Boys, about the inherent unfairness of high speed trading, is the talk of Wall Street and the financial media. The backlash to the book is a familiar refrain: "Everyone already knows that." Well, that's the point, isn't it?

"This is a never-ending race," says the CEO of a high-speed trading firm that's built a network of lasers to trade stocks several nanoseconds faster. This is the single stupidest use of human ingenuity happening in the world today.