The masters of the universe -- those Wall Street financiers whose shenanigans destroyed a bunch of our retirement savings last year -- aren't simply the rulers of all that is dollars and nonsense. They're clairvoyant too.

How they couldn't foresee last year's market crash, and their own ruin of the economy, will remain forever a mystery.

Still, nothing other than a bit of extrasensory perception could explain the ability of investment bankers and their ilk to anticipate the needs and desires of the state's former pension investment chief, Patricia Gerrick.

State Treasurer Janet Cowell fired Gerrick from her $340,000-a-year job back in August. Since then, public-record searches by the media have filled out some details that might account for the firing.

Gerrick, hired by former Treasurer Richard Moore, had been responsible for overseeing investments in the $60 billion pension fund that pays for the retirements of state employees.

Among other transgressions, Gerrick traveled to conferences and meetings on the dime of the investment firms doing business with the pension fund. The fund also hired a Gerrick friend as a "placement agent" to arrange a $150 million investment.

Now, why you need to hire "placement agents"to "arrange" investments when you're paying people $340,000 a year to decide how to invest money is hard to figure. Cowell and the Securities Exchange Commission apparently agree. Cowell says her administration has never hired a placement agent; the SEC is considering a rule to ban the practice.

Most recently, The Charlotte Observer's Mark Johnson reported that departmental e-mails showed investment firms showering Gerrick with all kinds of offers to help her children land jobs, spruce up job resumes, take trips or find housing.

The head of one investment firm passed along a ticket so that Gerrick's daughter could attend a festival in Bermuda. Another offered help in trying to find the daughter a job in the real-estate industry. Three others offered help with a resume. One offered an internship in Spain. One offered help finding an apartment in New York.

Gerrick's explanation is that, except for the airline ticket, the other offers were turned down. As for the plane ticket, it was not bought by the investment firm. "Just because you see people being helpful doesn't mean she (her daughter) used that help," Gerrick told the newspaper.

Some e-mails tend to contradict the explanation. But taking Gerrick at her word, isn't it amazing how these financiers doing business with the state knew about a child's job search, her chosen profession or that she was moving to New York?

If Gerrick's own prompting didn't cause the offers, what else but a little mind reading could explain them?

Perhaps people in the business of predicting the rise and fall of companies, industries and markets can divine the future.

I just wish one of these wise soothsayers had given me a call last October.