With all the policy emphasis on too-big-to-fail, let’s not forget one thing: Our future prosperity depends less on the lumbering behemoths who have stumbled so badly, and more on the small firms that are job-creators, and on firms that are still only a gleam in the eye of some entrepreneur.

That is not to say that in the current crisis the Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson have got it all wrong as they try to cope with the danger of a collapse of the financial system.