Cheat Sheet

It's hard not to feel a little sorry for Eliot Spitzer. Once known as the scourge of Wall Street, he was yanked off the stage right before the financial crisis that may have proved his shining moment. He is left coaching from the sidelines in the Washington Post. "Those who truly understand economics, as did Adam Smith, do not preach an absence of government participation," he writes. "A market is a product of laws, rules and enforcement. It needs transparency, capital requirements, and fidelity to fiduciary duty. The alternative, as we are seeing, is anarchy." Spitzer obviously rues his missed opportunity: "Although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past, I very much hope and expect that President Obama and his new administration will have the strength and wisdom to do again what FDR did." Just so.