Almost every physicist by now has heard of the fast-growing subdiscipline of “econophysics”, a field characterized by collaborations between physicists and economists and focused on asking if new insights or even laws could emerge if the concepts and approaches of statistical physics were brought to bear on questions that originate in economics. And almost everyone, physicist or nonphysicist, has by now heard that the economies of every country–large or small, Eastern or Western–are witnessing truly huge fluctuations. So it is natural to ask

“Does econophysics have anything to say about the current financial/economic turmoil?’’