Life Without Oil, In Fact, Would Be

Since The Attack On The United States On September 11 2001, And The Us Retaliation In Afghanistan And Iraq, There Must Be Few People Who Have Not Felt A Twinge Of Nostalgia For The Cold War.

We Read Too Much Shakespeare At School, And View Our Parliamentary Politics As Dynastic Drama, In Which An Impatient Crown Prince Frets At His Long Subordination And Begins To Scheme For The Throne He Knows He Merits, Was Promised And Has Earned.

Viewed From A Distance, Or Through The Eye Of The All-knowing Ceo Of The Universe, The Crash Of 2008 Followed The Usual Pattern. A Long-lived Boom Driven By Cheap Credit, Going Back As Far As 1982 (though Subject To Interruptions In The Mid-1980s And 1990s, And In 2001), Came To Grief Because Of A Rise In The Cost Of Borrowing Money.

By Pouring Money And Goods Into Devastated Regions, Foreign Aid Workers Sometimes Compound The Disruption And Debauch The Survivors.

To Give Money To A Woman - And Here I Must Speak As A Man - Is To Deny Her Special Quality, Her Irreplaceability, And Reduce Her Unique Amiability To A Commodity. Money Takes Away Her Name, While Transforming Her Lover Into A Nameless Customer Of A Market Of Appetites.