The leading Repubican financial regulator Alan Greenspan, one of the architects of today's global order has just published his memoirs, The Age of Turbulence. Paul Krugman takes him apart and shows how he is whitewashing his role and trying the 'don't blame me it was my brother-in-law' gambit as we totter on the edge of a crash. Now he's just given an interview to Richard Adams in today's Guardian. He had praised the intelligence of Cheney and Rumsfeld. "They [meaning the Republicans, his own party] had the Presidency and control of both house of Congress and a budget surplus, and a very capable group of people." So, the interviewer asks "what went wrong?" He shakes his head ruefully, "I don't know".

Ruefelly! Could it have been corporate power? Could it have been that he didn't blow the whistle? Are we supposed to share his pain? He may have been frank about saying openly that Iraq was about the strategic control of oil supplies, but even this honesty can be seen as a form of passing the buck. Who better...