JUDGMENT CALLS: “Good Times Breed Bad Times,” by Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, 27 October 2008. THE ECONOMY: “The End of Capitalism? Experts say free-market theories will prevail, but resentment is building over the U.S. brand,” by Anthony Faiola, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 20-26 October 2008. ARTICLE: “USA brand drops a spot, study says,” by Barbara De Lollis, USA Today, 7 November 2008.

Nice quote from always good Samuelson, who has a new book out:

We suffer cycles of self-delusion, sometimes too giddy and sometimes too glum. The next recovery usually lies in the ruins of the last recession.

Truer words rarely spoken nowadays, citing the tendency of academics, journalists, pundits, politicians and bloggers (the last just equaling additional a--holes with opinions, to put their newness in context). So resentment against our brand builds, we are told, and America has dropped a notch lower than last year in global brand ranks (now we’re behind both Australia and Canada—hardly an “ouch!” since they’re knock-offs of the same original brand from which we sprang). Yes, we will be tagged with too-loose capital flows, but the problem is located more in the inter-market realm than merely inside Wall Street: questionable instruments were sold to those without the knowledge and capability to judge them. Now, these other markets were dumb enough to take them, and we can’t fix that, but some sort of global SEC that becomes a repository of transparency rules seems inevitable as a result. To me, that’s a big part of any Bretton Woods II.