The Federal Reserve Board’s clout isn’t what it was during Alan Greenspan’s day. Back then the Fed looked and acted all-powerful (even though in the real world it wasn’t). Now it’s visibly failing to unfreeze key debt markets in which giant institutions lend to each other. Those markets have frozen out of fear - no one knows what hidden toxic time bombs are on other firms’ balance sheets, or even on their own. The Fed hasn’t been able to thaw the markets with interest rate cuts or by using its “discount window,” and has been reduced to trying to bribe and cajole big players into borrowing from it as a substitute for borrowing from each other. Comedown City.