Economic meltdown 2008: October 2009 Archives

I agree with Jonathan that not enough has changed in how we "do business," as it were.

I believe that Obama and Bernanke and others have helped us avoid the economic collapse that the best experts feared early this year. No one really knew where the worst downward spiral in eight decades would end.

To shift the metaphors, the overly obese patient was saved from the life-threatening heart attack. But I do suspect a return to gluttony, or at least an insufficient resolve to tighten that belt or that lap band.

Here, I'm disappointed in Obama. He had the opportunity to use his bully pulpit not just for Nobel-Prize winning discussions of international reconciliation, but for even more important discussions of what it means to be an American who produces more than he or she consumes. He had a chance to point an anxious nation -- especially receptive younger people who don't tar him as a Marxist African -- toward a higher set of values than mass consumerism. He missed his chance, and may have only forestalled the heart attack that kills.