As can be seen, the whole process was an exercise in increasing the perceived fairness of the bailout bill. What is interesting is that many vociferous opponents in Main Street were well aware that the bill not being passed implied immense stress to the financial arteries, leading to a seizure of the financial system. Common citizens’ retirement money was at stake if the bill did not pass. Despite that, they preferred that possibility to the very real and apparently “unfair” bailing out of Wall Street. It is irrational behaviour to deliberately hurt one’s self-interest, but that is precisely why Homo Economicus is now under question. Humans don’t always place self interest above fairness.

Bernanke, Paulson, Pelosi and the rest could have done better for themselves had they consulted de Waal and his monkeys.

The writer is a Hyderabad based economist and oil-watcher express@expressindia.com