The Dividing Line Between Wish And Need

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.

Ever Since The Destruction Of Baghdad By The Mongols In 1258, The Muslim World Has Been In Slow Decline Relative To The West. With Napoleon's Invasion Of Egypt And The Creeping British Annexation Of Muslim India, That Decline Took On A Malign Aspect.

Of All The Failed Technologies That Litter The Onward March Of Science - Steam Carriages, Zeppelins, Armoured Trains - None Has Been So Catastrophic To Prosperity As The Last Century's Attempt To Generate Electricity From Nuclear Fission.

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.

Europe And North America, We Are Told, Are Less Dependent On Energy-intensive Heavy Industry Than In The 1960s And 1970s. It Seems We Squeeze More Gdp Out Of A Barrel Of Oil Than In Those Benighted Days.