A falling house of cards

One might have expected at least some political debate about the financial time bomb depicted in James Crosby’s “Interim Analysis of Mortgage Finance”—a report commissioned by the treasury into the mortgage market crisis—published in July. Instead, it was quickly tagged as something too difficult to contemplate.

The hope is that markets will be able to ride out what will turn out to be short-term turbulence. But a year after the credit crunch began, some of the problems seem to be intensifying. Privately, business and householders alike are preparing for the worst—while everyone colludes in the fiction that no useful public…