His repeated assertion of this thesis in the intervening years went some distance in explaining why Bernanke's Fed did essentially nothing to curb the worst financial abuses that led up to the crisis of 2007–8; Bernanke had been insisting throughout that the mortgage market was sound, hedge funds were “disciplined,” and the banks solid right up to the onset of the failure of Lehman Brothers. This self-congratulation persisted even though a few inside figures such as the Fed governor Ned Gramlich (who was forced to resign in 2005) and the Atlanta Fed president, Jack Guynn, had been sounding the alarm since 2005. It is difficult to convey in any short space just how much the orthodox economics profession loved this trope of the Great Moderation and its ballyhooed prophet; so much so that it spawned a huge academic literature in its own right. Not only did highly ranked economics journals continue to publish articles discussing the Great Moderation long after the crash rendered the very idea ludicrous, but (having no shame) some tone-deaf economists even argued that the crisis had in no way impugned the existence of a Great Moderation.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 504