A Primer on the Wall Street Meltdown

NEW YORK — Flying into New York Tuesday, I had the same feeling I had when I arrived in Beirut two years ago, at the height of the Israeli bombing of that city — that of entering a war zone. The immigration agent, upon learning I taught political economy, commented, “Well, I guess you folks will now be revising all those textbooks?” The bus driver welcomed passengers with the words, “New York is still here, ladies and gentlemen, but Wall Street has disappeared, like the Twin Towers.” Even the usually cheerful morning shows feel obligated to begin with the bad news, with one host attributing the bleak events to “the fat cats of Wall Street who turned into pigs.”