Summary
When real disaster strikes, that's all over. I'm a transplanted Westerner who married a guy from New York City. We live in Brooklyn. One of the few good things that came out of 9/11 is that for a while I could walk into bars in Idaho and Nevada and Montana and not have to mumble when asked where I'm from. In fact, people would tear up, ask me where I was "that day," shake my hand and even buy me a beer.
Well, those days are past, but disaster is here again. It's not just stocks that are down: It's oil, it's commodities, it's factory orders, it's retail. The culture-warriors are still at it, but the message isn't resonating. Blame Wall Street? No one works there anymore. Blame Washington? We need the Treasury Department, and we need it bad.America's fundamentals are strong. But not our economy, not our education system, not our health care system, not our infrastructure. Nope, those all need work. But fundamentally, we are a pragmatic country. We don't cling to tradition when it doesn't serve. We have been in jams like this before. Go back and look at the Panics of 1837, 1873, and 1893. Look at the "Long Depression" of the 1880s and the "Great Depression" of the 1930s. Some of those events were handled better than others. But when the chips are down, we tend to jettison ideology and find practical solutions to our problems. We even saw it this fall as George Bush - of all people - did the right thing and moved to partially nationalize the banking system.See the full content of this document
Extract
It's Time to Cowboy Up
They're a lot of fun, those culture wars. City folk get a chuckle over the cretins out in Kansas passing laws against evolution. The Fox News crowd enjoys fulminating about feminazis. Good ratings, good rantings, good times all around.
Div...See the full content of this document
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