The author states: "In sum, blaming the financial crisis on the naivete of leading policymakers such as Greenspan and Summers is unfair and unfounded." That might be true: it might not have been naiveté, but wilful blindness.

The article continues: "The Greenspan Fed also tried to force more capital into the banks it supervised, but it soon realized that this would drive risk-taking into various “shadow banks” that lay outside its authority [...]"

Funny how the "if we regulate it, it will just move underground, so we might as well allow it" line is applied to financial misdeeds and guns (in the US), but not to prostitution or drugs (at least in the past).

Fully agreed that Ayn-Rand-acolyte Greenspan bears some responsibility for the meltdown. Maybe the author of this article (and his biographer) got too close to his subject.

However, the core lesson from the article rings true: The problem was not that people didn't know. It was that they either did not want to or did not manage to do something about it, because many forces conspired to keep the status quo.