Reading Alan Greenspan’s reflections on the causes of the financial crash, it becomes obvious that economics is nothing like a science. The most important American economist of his generation, who was chairman of the US Federal Reserve for most of it, admits in his latest book, The Map and the Territory, that he now sees that there were basic fallacies in the system of free market capitalism he presided over. Mainstream economic theory said free markets were a self-correcting mechanism which flourished only when the state stood well clear. In 2008 they didn’t self-correct, and the state had to step in. Capitalism had found within itself a supreme capacity for wealth destruction. If engineers built bridges on such a flawed theoretical basis they would fall down.For all that, &l