What Power Looks Like

The Fed's evolving crisis-management playbook underscores not only the move toward more public-private collaboration on big global issues, but also the concentration of power among a very select and insular group of players—in this case, the heads of the world's biggest financial institutions

Many critics assert that this financial crisis is a classic example of elite overreach. Historically, elites from the tyrants of ancient Greece to those of post Civil War America have always been undone by their own greed and ambition. Many today wonder if this might be the beginning of the end for the current superclass, as it was in those instances when the rise of political reformers like Solon and Cleisthenes or trustbusters like Teddy Roosevelt led to major changes in efforts to rein in elite power.