But crises will always happen and, even if there is a depressing periodicity to them, their timing, form and provenance will elude prognostication. Most crises, notably the big ones, creep up on us from unsuspected quarters. As Keynes wisely observed: "The inevitable never happens. It is the unexpected always." So, if the value of economics in preventing crises will always be limited (although hopefully not non-existent), perhaps a fairer and more realistic yardstick should be its value as a guide in responding to them. Here, one year on, we can say that economics stands vindicated.

How so? Recall that the recession of the late 1920s in the US became the Great Depression, owing to a combination of three factors: overly tight monetary policy; overly cautious fiscal policy (especially under FDR in 1936, when tightening led to another sharp downturn in the US economy); and dramatic recourse to beggar-thy-neighbour policies, including competitive devaluations (as countries went off the gold standard in the 1930s) and increases in trade barriers. The impact of this global financial crisis has been significantly limited because on each of these scores, the policy mistakes of the past were strenuously and knowingly avoided.

Phew

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

For decades, supporters of the royals have turned out to greet them as they go about their duties.

But those hoping for a memento of the Queen and her family yesterday were stunned after police seized their cameras.

It is the first time that visitors watching the Queen, Prince Charles and Princes William and Harry make their way to church have been prevented from taking photographs.

The incident comes just weeks after the Queen made an appeal for privacy and warned newspapers they face legal action if they publish paparazzi photos of ' private' situations.

NEW YORK -- Grammy-winner José Feliciano has gotten an apology after accusing a pair of radio producers of trashing the spirit of Christmas by using his popular holiday song, "Feliz Navidad," for a racist musical spoof about undocumented immigrants.

Feliciano released a statement Wednesday saying that he was "revolted beyond words" and that the song was never meant to be "a vehicle for a political platform of racism and hate."

Here's the recipe: Kale with baked eggs.

I can do metric measurements for everything, but the 40g butter and 40g plain flour for the roux. What would these be in T or tsp?

I've been using my usual roux recipe, but I'm curious to what the measures really should be.

I use this dish as a main course sometimes too, but for Christmas dinner I served it as vegetable dish alongside poached salmon.

2009 was the Year of the Zombie. The system for capital formation and allocation basically died but there was no funeral.

A great national voodoo spell has kept the banks and related entities like Fannie Mae and the dead insurance giant AIG lurching around the graveyard with arms outstretched and yellowed eyes bugged out, howling for fresh infusions of blood... er, bailout cash, which is delivered in truckloads by the Federal Reserve, which is itself a zombie in the sense that it is probably insolvent.

The government and the banks (including the Fed) have been playing very complicated games with each other, and the public, trying to pretend that they can all still function, shifting and shuffling losses, cooking their books, hiding losses, and doing everything possible to detach the relation of "money" to the reality of productive activity.