“Each August for the past several years, a conference room on the third floor of the Jackson Lake Lodge here has been stocked with financial data terminals, secure phone lines and all the other accessories that Ben Bernanke and his top lieutenants at the Federal Reserve might need to fight a global financial crisis.

“Many of the world’s leading central bankers were back at their annual economic symposium here this weekend. But the conference room is empty.

“The crisis, which started in subprime U.S. mortgages six years ago, engulfed banks on both sides of the Atlantic, brought the worst recession in generations and drove several European countries to the brink of bankruptcy, is for practical purposes over. It is over in no small part because the central bankers flooded the world with trillions of dollars and insinuated themselves into countless markets, taking once-unthinkable steps to steer the financial system from the abyss.

“The question now for the global economy, and the men and women who guide it, is this: What have you wrought?”

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