America Will Overcome Madoff, Blagojevich Scandals and the Crash

It is a characteristic of the American pendulum that it rarely stops in the middle. Hence we have periods where we believe that we have annulled the very law of gravity, then times when we believe that the apocalypse is at hand. We need no miracles. We need to catch our breath, setting aside the sort of hubris that overtook us in the 1990s and the current despair that is driving some of the more vulnerable among us to pray for heavenly deliverance. So Alan Greenspan was not a God, and his pauses before congressional committees were only, well, pauses. Beyond magic and derivatives, we may return to simple reason and to J. P. Morgan's belief in character.

• Read more by Fouad Ajami.
• Read more about the economy.
• Read more about globalization.

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