Fear of Derivatives - Followup

I found the article below on the web recently and wanted to respond to it, however the author does not allow comments on his blog:

Fear and Loathing - WMD or "What are Derivatives?"

The article is an edited extract from the book: Traders Guns and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives by Satyajit Das. It is precisely the sort of article that I had in mind when I wrote my earlier article on derivatives. It attempts to instill fear in the mind of the reader without actually addressing the real issue of derivatives.

He talks in a Rumsfeldian (not a compliment) manner about "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" in the area of derivatives, and makes the case that unknown unknowns are a cause of obvious concern. He then name drops a complicated sounding financial product "double knockout currency option with rebate" and presents it as a known unknown.

Obviously, yes, most lay readers of his book don't know what such an instrument is, however to portray it as an unknown in the context of financial markets is ridiculous. Anyone involved with such instruments knows what they are and why they are used (I may discuss it in another post), and they are certainly not an unknown of any sort.

His article therefore appears to be attempting to instill in the reader a sense of fear in derivatives, based on their own lack of knowledge. He also goes on to state that the only driving forces behind the use of derivatives are fear and greed. I don't intend to discuss the actual uses for derivatives in this article but suffice to say, you wouldn't see a 400+ trillion USD market for them if their use was only motivated by such irrational emotions.

As for the motivation of the author for writing such an article, I can only assume that at least one of those emotions was his driving force - and he seeks to sell more copies of the book based on the back of it.