(James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

By James Saft

July 14 (Reuters) - The lesson of recent developments regarding Greece, China and the Federal Reserve isn't that officials are losing control, but instead how events confirm the great extent to which they are the key determining force in financial markets.

Indeed, for an investor, watching officialdom, in its many guises, is becoming something approaching the only game in town. As any gambler can tell you, when there is only one game in town it is hard to get an even break.

That's not to say that there aren't many investors doing fundamental analysis and making fine distinctions in how they direct their capital based on the results.

But a willingness by central bankers to intervene in markets, and tailor policy so as to support prices has made bureaucrat-watching a full-time job for more and more investors. That's even before we consider the case of China, where government in all its majesty reacted to a recent plunge by taking ever more extreme steps to force prices higher.

In the U.S., for example, Federal Reserve policy drives more than half the volatility, or day-to-day movement, in stocks today, according to calculations by hedge fund SLJ Capital. That compares to just 10 or 15 percent two decades ago.

One of the most common, and easy to make, mistakes of journalism is to conflate covering a government with covering a country. This is a seductive error, in part precisely because it is so easy to do: government buildings do not move. Similarly, it is a good deal easier for investors to track government policy than it is to, for example, work out the complex impact of new technology on existing and new businesses.

Easy official-watching may be, but, for good or ill, in the post-crisis era, investors' obsession with policy is not a fault but a rational reaction. Unprecedented control of financial markets by officials is not a temporary aberration but an ongoing feature.

This rankles many investors, who fancy themselves as sleuths and seers, not mere second-guessers of politicians and policy-makers. It is a less heroic role, and more like being a lobbyist with no power.

Still, saying that markets should be allowed to set the cost of capital and direct its allocation is one thing; investing as if this is true when clearly it is not is quite another.

THREE STORIES, ONE THEME

The three main market-moving stories of the past week, Greece, China and the Fed, all illustrate this point in complementary ways.

China is perhaps the clearest, and most egregious example. Having first encouraged small investors to flood the stock market, in part because rising stock market wealth might help encourage the growth of a consumer-based economy, the Chinese government found itself threatened when a sudden sell-off began in June.