The United States needs a very different set of policies to cope with its post-bubble economy. It would be a serious mistake to enact tax cuts aimed at increasing already excessive consumption. Americans need to save. They don’t need another flat-screen TV made in China.
-- Stephen Roach in the NY Times
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“The country is fortunate in one respect: The sudden buckling of financial safeguards has put just about everyone in touch with his inner New Dealer. Even Alan Greenspan recently confessed to Congress a crisis of faith in self-regulation. Meanwhile former free market true believers in the Bush Administration have tossed out money from the public vault like looters, and just as untidily; if they can sort out exactly what they have done, the Treasury’s mandarins must soon prepare PowerPoint presentations to document for their successors the most expansive nationalizations undertaken in the United States since the Second World War. The (Bush) Administration seem(ed) giddy with a discovery familiar in the palaces of certain despots: Yes, you can just print the bills on your own presses and hand them out to your friends.”
-- Steve Coll in the New Yorker
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“America demonstrates invincibly one thing that I had doubted up to now: That the middle classes can govern a State. ... Despite their small passions, their incomplete education, their vulgar habits, they can obviously provide a practical sort of intelligence and that turns out to be enough.”
-- Alexis de Toqueville, 1832
This was before TV, meth, obesity and unlimited self-indulgence. Before God, guns and gays furnished the marching music for one-third of the nation. Before careless voting and absentee non-voters and the absence of what President O. calls “adult supervision on Wall Street” brought the nation to its knees.
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This just in from our midtown cynic:
TV cooks throw fresh garlic into a hot skillet. This kills the flavor, even lends bitterness. Add chopped garlic lastly.
Basketball is being ruined by its own skillful players. The basket should be raised two feet; the rules about “carrying, cupping, palming” the ball and “traveling” should be returned to what they were under Dr. Naismith.
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Only 28 percent of Americans knew American casualties in Iraq were more than 4,000 this spring, according to the Pew Research Center.
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Tourist’s dietary report from the frozen North:
Had a sandwich yesterday that had granny smith apple, pickled green tomato, rough Dijon mustard, lettuce, white cheddar, all on a big chewy baguette. |
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