Bonus-laden bankers remain the principal scapegoats for the financial crisis. Yet it is misguided to blame overpaid bankers. As Andrew Smithers says in his recent Wall Street Revalued: “Bankers and other financiers will always hang themselves . . . if provided with sufficient rope.” Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and his successor Ben Bernanke provided that rope.

President Barack Obama now proposes giving Mr Bernanke a second term at the Fed. Yet despite Mr Bernanke’s relative success in dousing financial fires over the past year, the former Princeton professor has shown himself ill-suited to the job of running America’s central bank.