While some will blame excessive deregulation of the financial sector, lack of diligence by the financial regulators or sheer greed, this crisis cannot be explained away so superficially. It represents, instead, the final failure of the economic paradigm that has dominated the world for over two decades. Since it was introduced by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the Washington Consensus gained near-religious status among its supporters. It was the economic policy for “The End of History”, the policy which, when adopted by all countries, would allow the world to emerge onto a sunny plateau of peace, prosperity and opportunity. And yet, in many ways, the economic paradigm failed because it ignored realities that could be shoved aside momentarily, blocked out knowingly, but that nevertheless stubbornly refused to go away.