Economies, Advanced and Primitive

Christopher Caldwell ends an intriguing article on William Bagehot ( Weekly Standard , 12/22) with this: “To be blunt, credit is successfully reestablished when financial elites say, ‘When.’ Credit is close to a synonym for the mood of the ruling class. To say an economy is based on credit is to say it is based on animal mysteries. Glamour, prestige, elan, sprezzatura, cutting a figure . . . that is what the economy is made of. It is a rather terrifying thought. Viewed as Bagehot viewed it, from the perspective of a central bank in crisis, an advanced economy looks an awful lot like a primitive economy.”