"As the French poet Charles Baudelaire noted: “The devil wins at the point where the public comes to believe that he doesn’t exist.” Finance wins at the point at which economists stop talking about debt, and talk as if all loans were productive and the debts could be paid. So today’s economics curriculum is basically a disinformation system, subsidized by financial lobbyists to turn out “useful idiots” who don’t believe that a debt problem exists, any more than they believe that there is any such thing as a free lunch. To deter reform, the financial sector selects people like Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke who actually believe what they’re saying. The best con man or disinformation lobbyist is one who believes what he’s saying."