Central banks stand widely accused of having failed. Is this fair? Not entirely. Just as they were much too highly rated before the crisis hit, they have now become somewhat oversold. Part of what went wrong in public policy in the lead-up to the credit crunch is that too much trust was vested in central banks, which were widely credited with almost superhuman powers. This led to a feeling of false security and a blissful disregard of what the bankers, the politicians and the wider economy were up to. Whatever happened, it was thought, monetary policy could always be relied on to come riding to the rescue. In the US, they even had a term for it – the “Greenspan put”, after the former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan.