People inside the federal government sometimes describe Washington as a battleground between economists and lawyers. Case in point: when I was reporting recently on the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, some Washington hands spoke of the agency not in theoretical terms—as an institution that represents a reaction against deregulatory thinking in finance, say—but in terms of turf: as a place where there were too many lawyers and not enough people with econ Ph.D.s walking around. The financial crisis has probably helped the lawyers' side in the Washington turf war. As Betsey ... Read More