The Wall Street Journal says that predictions of deeper economic gloom in 2009 may be way, way off target. Forecasts of GDP growth, says the Journal, are "grounded in the nature of past contractions and how long it took the system to begin expanding again. But none of these past patterns are necessarily a useful guide to the circumstances of today."Mainly, the story points out that there have been no fundamental changes in our economic system; no wars, plagues, earthquakes. All the physical infrastructure that created the rich global economy is still in place and could bounce back sooner rather than later.
We, for one, always enjoy the debunking of a economic doomsday scenario. Just for fun sometime, rummage though a bookstore for old bestsellers about the economy. You'll find titles like"The Great Depression of 1990," or 1980's predictions about how the Japanese economy was going to take over the world.
Victor Davis Hanson, writing for Tribune media, looks back on 2008. If someone told you at the beginning of the year that gas would be cheap and Iraq would be stable, but Wall Street would be in a crisis mode, you would have though they were nuts.
The Wired blog has a rock awesome list of the Best Scams, Capers and Crimes of 2008. Like, for example, the guy who used an unwitting flash mob to aid him in an armored car robbery. The list is awfully fun to read, but it's logically impossible that these are truly the year's best. All of these people, after all, were busted. The really successful scammers are the ones we never hear about because they don't get caught.
Ross Douthat blogs on Atlantic Unbound about Christopher Hitchens' screed against Christmas. In a wordy sort of way, Douthat posits that the symbolic meaning of the Christmas story, it's significance in the hearts of men, matters more than historical, literal truth.
