Next week dozens of honchos around Washington are going to be gathering to try to devise ways to ensure that ordinary working people pay for their incompetent management of the economy. This effort will pass under the guise of "fiscal responsibility."

The basic story of course is quite simple. Geniuses like Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and the rest of the country's top economists and policymakers somehow either could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble or just thought it was cute.