English football fans have a reputation for hurling foul-mouthed abuse at opposing teams and supporters. But their most fearful chant contains no profanities and is aimed at the teams manager when things are going badly wrong. It is a slow, mournful, sometimes contemptuous refrain. It often precedes a coachs sacking.
"You dont know what youre doing. You dont know what youre doing."
Has soon-to-depart US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson been hearing this reproach in his dreams? He seems to be making an effort to rewrite his part in the failure of the US financial system, perhaps in an effort to influence the verdict of history.
In his testimony to the house committee on financial services in November, he seemed to admonish the politicians for delaying his Tarp plan. Paulson asserts that market conditions worsened so much in the...