"Some debates are merely academic. This one isn’t. If you believe that people are rational and markets are efficient, this will largely determine your views on gun control (unnecessary), consumer protection laws (caveat emptor), welfare programs (too many unintended consequences), derivatives regulation (let a thousand flowers bloom), whether you should invest in passive index funds or hyperactive hedge funds (index funds only), the causes of financial crises (too much government intervention in housing and mortgage markets), and how the government should or shouldn’t respond to them (the primary financial role for government should be producing and verifying information so that it can be incorporated into market prices).

"The financial crisis became a battleground in a greater ideological war. One of the fi rst casualties was the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, the man who journalist Bob Woodward called the “Maestro” in his biography of that name published in 2000."