Another Depression may have been averted, but the bailouts compromised our future. We need to know how the economy fell into such a deep hole.

The reader can rest assured that I have no training or professional expertise in finance or business. I say this not as a disclaimer but -- chest forward and chin high -- as a claim on the reader's trust.

Lessons from the Great Recession

One thing seems sure, there's a tinny, fraudulent sound to the Babylonian blather of the experts: The layman won't believe any of it anymore. All that opaque, priestly algebra -- risk management, credit ratings, contract triggers, "sophisticated" markets -- had no power to protect the harvest from failing.

The reader will perhaps remember the giddy days when chaos theory was said to...