True Believer, False God

For 20 years or so our economic and civic leaders looked to Alan Greenspan to lead worship of the God of the Economy. Turns out, his libertarian ideas about regulation convinced our leaders that questionable financial practices, illegal for most of the 20th century, were in fact not a problem. He led us into the desert, then right off a cliff, and now laments his own epic failure of judgment, a crisis of faith. But as Greenspan sits before Congress dumbfounded, we are left surrounding his golden calf, now revealed to be just a worthless statue.

The old man is certainly rich enough to avoid any serious financial consequence of his own historic blunders, save the stain on his academic legacy. So I imagine that after his testimony is no longer required he'll retire to the comfort that a life lived in the seat of power affords him. And I wonder if in some moments he will pause and consider the fates of the millions of lives he touched in service of his libertarian ideals. How does it feel to have been so wrong about something so important?