One of the victims of the prolonged financial crisis has been my comfort with my belief system. I grew up reading Milton Friedman and taking classes from like-minded professors. When an unfamiliar issue came along, I was quick to ask myself, "What would Friedman think about this?" The answer was usually self-evident, seemed correct to me and fit nicely with my answers to other questions. I came to regard my economic philosophy as "classical liberal" or "economic conservative" to friends who wouldn't be familiar with the first term.