I never dreamed that I would avidly read the "Business Section" of the Times with a mix of fascination and dread. But such are the times that are upon us.A great help, for their clarity and moral indignation, have been the columns of Joe Nocera, in my humble view, fully meriting a Pulitzer.Today he writes about the American International Group (A.I.G.): "Propping Up a House of Cards." Here's part of what he says:

Donn Vickrey, who runs the independent research firm Gradient Analytics, predicts that A.I.G. is going to cost taxpayers at least $100 billion more before it finally stabilizes, by which time the company will almost surely have been broken into pieces, with the government owning large chunks of it. A quarter of a trillion dollars, if it comes to that, is an astounding amount of money to hand over to one company to prevent it from going bust. Yet the government feels it has no choice: because of A.I.G.s dubious business practices during the housing bubble it pretty much has the worlds financial system by the throat.If we let A.I.G. fail, said Seamus P. McMahon, a banking expert at Booz & Company, other institutions, including pension funds and American and European banks will face their own capital and liquidity crisis, and we could have a domino effect. A bailout of A.I.G. is really a bailout of its trading partners which essentially constitutes the entire Western banking system.I dont doubt this bit of conventional wisdom; after the calamity that followed the fall of Lehman Brothers, which was far less enmeshed in the global financial system than A.I.G., who would dare allow the worlds biggest insurer to fail? Who would want to take that risk? But that doesnt mean we should feel resigned about what is happening at A.I.G. In fact, we should be furious. More than even Citi or Merrill, A.I.G. is ground zero for the practices that led the financial system to ruin.They were the worst of them all, said Frank Partnoy, a law professor at the University of San Diego and a derivatives expert. Mr. Vickrey of Gradient Analytics said, It was extreme hubris, fueled by greed. Other firms used many of the same shady techniques as A.I.G., but none did them on such a broad scale and with such utter recklessness. And yet and this is the part that should make your blood boil the company is being kept alive precisely because it behaved so badly.

Karl Barth famously counseled the preacher to preach with the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other. As we prepare for the First Sunday of Lent with its gospel of the temptation narrative, I finally understand that Barth meant the "Business Section."