No gloating, but . . .

To indulge in Schadenfreude is a personal moral hazard, but it's interesting enough to be worth noting that the current financial crisis was best diagnosed by people whose intellectual forebears, like my genealogical forebears, spoke German. And their opinions on economics, as sound as they are, have about as much currency in the wider world, especially those precincts where conventional wisdom is formulated, as do my ideas on just about everything. Even an otherwise masterly account of how the crisis was created by government actions and aggressive interventions into the marketplace (especially the mortgage marketplace) by John Steele Gordon fails to mention the central role of the Fed, which is apparently going to escape this crisis it did so much to precipitate with its powers enhanced rather than with its head handed to it.