Yet, for all its billions in losses, the Bankia fiasco will be no

more than a footnote in the never-ending “Great Book of

Lies.” Included in this weighty volume are chapters devoted

to hubris, stupidity and the high levels of incompetence

exhibited by world leaders and policy makers.

In 2012, who will look back and remember that in 2008,

as financial panic raged in America, with fears of global

contagion mounting, Spain’s Jaime Caruana – former Governor

of Spain’s central bank and a top IMF executive in

charge of assessing global banking risk – sought to calm

worries about falling real estate prices by declaring “The

financial system in Spain is able to cope with that and is

properly capitalized.”

As a reward for his incompetence, he was promoted to

chief executive of the Bank for International Settlements,

one of the plum jobs in the world of finance.

Not to be outdone by his predecessor, in April 2010,

José Vinals, who took over Caruana’s spot at the IMF, made

public assurances that the Spanish system was “fundamentally

sound” and its need for cash “very small.” Despite

making this absurdly incorrect forecast in the midst

of the eurozone debt crisis, Vinals continues in his role as

IMF’s top global banking risk assessor.

Another Spanish loser who won big was Rodrigo Rato.

Minister of the Economy from 1996 to 2004, First Deputy

Prime Minister from 2003 to 2004, and subsequently Managing

Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from

2004 to 2007, he was promoted to president of Bankia in 2010

and stood at the helm until its bankruptcy in May 2012.

In 2007, during his stint with the IMF, Rato issued a report

citing the “dynamism of Spain’s financial system,” asserting

that “its strong, prudential supervision and regulation

remain a forte of the economy.”

Forced from his Bankia post in June 2012, Mr. Rato, unlike

his equally ruinously wrong-headed colleagues, José

Vinals and Jaime Caruana, has yet to be rewarded for his

mistakes. But if history is any precedent, it won’t be long

before he is.