BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Sure, it will all be over someday. Sleepy governments have woken up. Economists are starting to figure out the secret dimensions to this financial crisis, and look to be putting together, internationally, the bitter-tasting but probably necessary formula for the Long March out of the current swamp. But when it is all over, will we have learned anything of lasting value?

Not if we listen only to the economists and financial gamblers who have been playing with international financial stability — and thus with our lives and livelihoods.

Have you ever noticed that our very smartest economists rarely have anything of value to say about ethics? For the vast majority of them, a factor like ethics just doesn't add up. It might as well be some kind of mystical X-factor as far as they're concerned. It just doesn't compute.

Notice, too, that business schools rarely teach actual courses in ethics; as for graduate economic departments, they don't bother with anything they can't scrawl down on a chart or graph and gaze at like Solomon.

Similarly, for craven Wall Street players, forget about it: Right and wrong for them means nothing more than profit or loss — and screw anyone who thinks otherwise (and if you do, you must be a dreaded socialist!). And this is a big part of the reason why we are in such economic trouble.

We are happy to report that former U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan was, delightfully, in the hot seat the other day in front of a grilling congressional committee. This was nice to see. Committee members wanted to know why the former cannot-do- anything-wrong Fed god didn't do something while in office all those years to prevent the current collapse. His responses were thoroughly and uncharacteristically fuzzy.

Ethics means, generally, caring about someone and/or something other than oneself. But until the crash, the "ethic" of Wall Street (and counterparts elsewhere around the globe) was that the more risk you took, the more money you made. The problem with that philosophy is that the faster you went, the closer and sooner came the cliff off which you would be propelled into the cave of catastrophe. Which is where many speculators are now.

In the U.S., when investment banks fell off the cliff, they crash-landed on a lot of relatively innocent people below. Commentators here have been straining to make the case that the average American Joe or Jane who signed a dicey mortgage to move into a house is as guilty as Sammy Slick who was packaging such toxic mortgages into a complex layer cake to entice greedy if unknowing investors to bite.

That's nonsense. The desire to own your own home is as American as apple pie — as kosher as Korean kimchi, as sublime as Japanese sushi. Houses and condominiums put roofs over the heads of families, including babies and other youngsters; it is a noble desire to have one, not a sign of greed.

But it is a sign of ethical shallowness in our culture that our government moved first to save the big boys and the big banking institutions rather than quickly to erect a Mortgage Guarantee Authority that would aim to reduce foreclosures and evictions to a minimum.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been closer to the mark than his opponent, but, alas, has gotten not close enough. He probably has been scared off: Incoming campaign rockets from John McCain's supporters have been lobbed at him bearing the word "socialism" on the side of their Republican shells.

This campaign flak has created a lot of noise but so far no direct hits have been recorded. That's because most Americans understand that an elite form of high-level socialism in this country already exists, in the form of tax breaks, credits and other privileges for the rich, powerful and connected. Why not a touch of socialism for the less well off to instill a measure of societal balance?

Fortunately, America is not a fascist state. Institutions exist to break strangleholds. A president who is not brain dead, and a Congress that is not bought and paid for, can do wonders should they elect to work together. What's more, America possesses an almost unique institution whose power cannot be underestimated. It's called the Federal Reserve System.

The Fed chairman now is a former Princeton professor who knows what he is doing. With proper support from the White House, the U.S. Fed could do even more to ease the pain of the recovery.

Europe has nothing like it; its EU members should get one themselves. Asia, someday, should do the same. Everyone needs one, especially when it is used wisely, boldly and in the general public interest. It will be interesting to observe how the Fed moves under a new White House administration.

Syndicated Columnist Tom Plate is a veteran U.S. journalist who once studied economics, among other subjects, at Princeton. © 2008 Pacific Perspectives Media Network