Poor little Ross Douthat, this analysis gig of his is so hard, especially while the fantasy world of conservatism continues crashing all around him when his primary job is to keep that fantasy alive, at great cost to the real world. Today we find little Ross taking on the crash of the Irish economy. In flailing about for an explanation of what has happened to this former poster-child of Chicago economics run wild, Douthat briefly flirts with an accurate explanation of what went wrong, but then pays proper homage to his overlords by discarding the painfully obvious truth in favor of yet another conservative talking point that is easily demonstrated to be false.

Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan, is a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago’s business school and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Readers familiar with Chicago school economics will see that the crisis has not led to a fundamental reevaluation of that school’s policy recommendations. The title of his book captures his thesis – Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures still Threaten the World Economy. Rajan writes clearly and his book is intended for the intelligent lay reader. His book contains no charts, graphs, or equations, doubtless at the urgings of the Princeton University Press. It is an ambitious book, for it seeks to explain the global crisis and different trends in the real economy and the financial sector in many nations.

Suffer the high-minded intelligentsia at the Federal Reserve, veritable Knights Templar of the financial universe, who struggled mightily to brace the gates of Wall Street against the barbarian onslaught of American consumers, those Wal*Mart Philistines who were too feeble-minded and innumerate to grasp the intellectually lofty arcana that was the synthetic CDO-backed housing bubble they unwittingly helped expand. . . .

In 2004, Alan Greenspan argued the Fed should keep worries about a growing housing bubble secret because the chumps buying the houses were too stupid to engage in a debate about whether there was a bubble or not.

Before serving as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke was the head of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, operating in the Christina Romer role. During that period he parroted the rose-colored outlook of the economy that characterized the Bush Administration prior to the Great Recession they created.

In the 1800′s ordinary Americans were crucified upon a cross of gold. Today, it’s their houses they’ve been nailed to, and it’s their houses they’ll go down with.