BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Sure, it will all be over someday. Sleepy governments have woken up. Economists are starting to figure out the secret dimensions to this financial crisis, and look to be putting together, internationally, the bitter-tasting but probably necessary formula for the Long March out of the current swamp. But when it is all over, will we have learned anything of lasting value?
Not if we listen only to the economists and financial gamblers who have been playing with international financial stability — and thus with our lives and livelihoods.
Have you ever noticed that our very smartest economists rarely have anything of value to say about ethics? For the vast majority of them, a factor like ethics just doesn't add up. It might as well be some kind of mystical X-factor as far as they're concerned. It just doesn't compute.