Anxious Days

"It just doesn’t seem like anything is cheap these days." - Faith Taylor, a personal trainer from Baltimore, quoted in a Washington Post story.

In the past month or so, the newspapers have been flooded, it seems, with uneasy headlines and opinions. Take, for example, a recent op-ed by conservative syndicated columnist Victor Hanson, published in the Albuquerque Journal, which captures well the degree to which the state-of-our-union at this moment in time has become unsettled.

He begins his column with a litany of bleak news:

• Oil has climbed over $100 a barrel;
• Gold surpassed $1000 an ounce;
• The dollar has slumped to a record low;
• Staples such as corn, soybeans, and wheat cost more today than anytime in our history;
• Foreign creditors hold over $12 trillion in U.S. government securities, a product of "staggering" trade deficits;
• The housing meltdown continues without an end-in-sight; home prices continue to fall; foreclosures are at an all-time high in modern memory; consumer savings is at an all-time low; stocks have slumped; and a major investment house had to be salvaged for a fraction of its former worth as a result of all this chicanery;
• We are still fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; 4000 servicemen and women have died in five years of  fighting