Have you heard the news? Janet Yellen is positively clairvoyant!

Yellen, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and, evidently, a front-runner to replace Ben Bernanke as chairman in several months, “was one of the first members of the Federal Open Market Committee . . . to realize that the [housing market’s troubles] could cause a major recession.” (Alan Blinder, Wall Street Journal, July 29.) She “was one of the only top Fed policy makers who warned about the housing bubble before the crisis.” (Edward Harrison, New York Times, July 29.) Yellen “raised concerns about the housing bubble in the mid-2000s, and highlighted the danger of a credit crunch in 2007.” (Matthew O’Brien, The Atlantic, July 30.) She displayed “prescience” and “identified the impending threats that both the housing bubble and the shadow banking sector posed to our entire economy.” (Roughly a third of Senate Democrats, in a letter to President Obama, July 26.) She “warned early and often, starting at least in 2005, about the problems in housing and the looming economic catastrophe.” (Mark Gungloff, Huffington Post, July 29.)