PARIS – Today, help comes from an unexpected direction – Alan Greenspan!

After so many years of mumbly-dumbly gobbledygook and credit-pumping folderol (much of the blame for the credit crisis of 2008 can be sent to his inbox), we had forgotten about Greenspan's earlier oeuvre.

Yes… before he became a public servant he might have passed for an honest man.

And his 1966 essay “Gold and Economic Freedom” is a classic. It helps explain how this credit bubble finally ends.

(Thanks to Pater Tenebrarum at David Stockman's Contra Corner for reminding us.)

We are sitting at a sidewalk café in Paris. It is August. Families have decamped for the country. So it is quiet in this part of the city (the 16th arrondissement).

At this hour of the morning, there would normally be children going to school with satchels on their backs. The streets would be clogged with commuters. And the cafés would be crowded with all manner of people.

But the children are gone. Along with their parents. All that is left are a few fathers wondering how to get into trouble with their families gone, along with some old people, tourists, and mental defectives, dragging behind them their worldly goods in rolling caddies.

We are not sure which category we fit into.

At one table sits a pair of elderly women enjoying a morning coffee. At another are a man and a woman. Both attractive. Fortysomething. They are talking about real estate. Probably planning an affair.

At another table is a man of our age. He drinks his coffee. He might otherwise read the paper, but the news kiosk is closed for the summer. There are no papers to be had – not in this neighborhood. So he just stares out into the street, looking at nothing in particular.

Two workmen – their clothes spattered with white splotches – sit at another table. They are rough-looking sorts in T-shirts taking a morning coffee break.

Buses go by. A few cars. Passersby, none moving very ambitiously. It's going to be a warm summer day.