And into the present moment:

A month ago, in the first round of this crisis, panicky rumors brought down banks. Now, with trillions of nervous dollars sloshing around the international markets, panicky rumors are bringing down countries.

And here's a final, unpleasant thought: Pakistan.

The Iceland Syndrome

And, from the tail-end of the last century:

The phone rings. "Whoopee!" you think. "The phone is ringing!" O.K., you really should calm down about this phone-ringing stuff, but you are the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, and this past year, for all its chaos and tumult, has been about the most exciting you could imagine. It's the holiday season, and you are eager to get to your family and all that, but boy, this holding the world economy by the hand is even better than advertised.

See also, this letter in response to "No Depression":

Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke do not have at their disposal the means to deal with these longer-term issues that will harm world economies. To address these issues, major nations must elect leaders prepared to deal with them, or, at the very least, stop electing people who dismiss them or delay dealing with them. If weak and ineffective leaders continue to be elected, the rest of us should join together and become politically powerful so that a worldwide calamity can perhaps be avoided.

Or should we just wait and see what happens?

The Three Marketeers

Looking back at the late 1930's.

The "War of the Worlds" broadcast remains enshrined in collective memory as a vivid illustration of the madness of crowds and the deeply invasive nature of broadcasting. The program seemingly proved that radio could, in the memorable words of Marshall McLuhan, turn "psyche and society into a single echo chamber." The audience's reaction clearly illustrated the perils of modernity. At the time, it cemented a growing suspicion that skillful artists — or incendiary demagogues — could use communications technology to capture the consciousness of the nation. It remains the prime example used by media critics, journalists, and professors to prove the power of the media.

...

But the ultimate irony behind "The War of the Worlds" is the discovery that the media are not all-powerful, that they cannot dominate our political consciousness or even our consumer behavior as much as we suppose. It may seem like a counter-intuitive discovery (especially considering its provenance), but ask yourself this: If we really know how to control people through the media, then why isn't every advertising campaign a success? Why do advertisements sometimes backfire? If persuasive technique can be scientifically devised, then why do political campaigns pursue different strategies? Why does the candidate with the most media access sometimes lose?

The answer is that humans are not automatons. We might scare easily, we might, at different times and in different places, be susceptible to persuasion, but our behavior remains structured by a complex and dynamic series of interacting factors.

The Hyped Panic Over 'War of the Worlds'

History doesn't repeat itself. But it rhymes.

Here I propose to reveal some of these hitherto unreported loans–enough, at least, to justify Congress in tearing away the screen altogether and bringing to light this whole story.

Before lifting a corner of the curtain let me insert a word about this dangerous notion that government can be safely conducted in secrecy. There is a school of politicians–in close communion with their business allies–who hold to what is sometimes called the idiot theory of government, because of certain expressions which the President himself has let fall. There is a belief that the citizens are stupid; that the less they know the better off they will be; that knowledge in their immature minds will frequently produce economic disorder, and that they will be better served if they will entrust their affairs to the strong and able men set over them by Providence and a well-oiled election machine. The theory ignores a very old truth: that if there are foolish citizens there are also selfish rulers; that the poor judgment of the masses is to be trusted hardly less than the bad ethics of their leaders, and that, in any case, those who supply the funds for governments and the blood for wars have a right to know what is being done with their money and their lives.

For a century this country (and the world) has been learning the solemn lesson that it has nothing to fear so much as the public servant who is unwilling to report to society what he is doing with its funds. In America, at least, we have been warring upon secret diplomacy, secret campaign funds, secret corporation activities, secret utility and railroad managements.

From the January 1933 issue of Harper's Magazine.

Inside the R.F.C.: An adventure in secrecy

The U.S. Justice Department has withdrawn a series of allegations made in federal court that tie Binyam Mohammed, a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, to a plot to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States, blow up apartment buildings here and release cyanide gas in nightclubs.

Defense lawyers said the decision should force the Pentagon to drop charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism against Mohammed, which were filed by military prosecutors in May. The charges, the lawyers said, are spurious and based on false confessions obtained through torture.

From the archive:

... essential ... superb, tough-minded ... meticulous ... assiduously investigated, brilliantly argued ... usefully horrifying ... devastating ... shattering ... powerful ... sharp, shaming ... grim, yet straightforward ... raises a great many uncomfortable, important questions. Sad, important and very difficult to watch.

Also:

Here it is, the much-hyped moment where Sarah Palin was unable to name any Supreme Court case that she disagreed with, other than Roe v. Wade.

One presumes this means she concurs with the Court's recent decisions:

Boumediene v. Bush is one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in recent years.

McCain has already promised that if elected he will appoint more justices like Roberts and Alito. It would take only one such appointment to make further decisions like Boumediene impossible, and probably reverse that decision itself.

I must say, this is most confusing.

Key Allegations Against Terror Suspect Withdrawn

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

From the archive:

The Soviets understood that these methods were cruel. They were also honest with themselves about the purpose of such cruelty -- to brutalize their enemies and to extract false confessions, rather than truthful intelligence. By denying this, President Bush is not just misleading us. He appears to be deceiving himself.

“I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”

According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"

CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos

Ross Mayfield:

E-mail overload is the leading cause of preventable productivity loss in organizations today. The fundamental problem of this otherwise great technology is largely behavioral, and new practices and technologies are arising to solve it.

Here are the top five tactics for making e-mail an efficient and effective collaboration tool:

Establish Internal E-Mail Practices
Move Group E-mail to Collaborative Workspaces
Establish Public Protocols When Possible
Reply to E-mail by Blog
Leverage Special-Purpose Social Software

From the archive, Mark Bittman:

I believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, ... I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

E-Mail Hell

For middle-aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests.

From this summer:

My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think.

Internet use 'good for the brain'

“What’s cool about the sport is, it’s all about confronting yourself and seeing what you’re capable of,” she said. “That’s very instructive in life. So, as far as my injuries go, it’s a little like the catcalls I get. I may not like it all that much, but it’s not going to stop me.”

From the archive:

Spread the word: This delirious import is the most (maybe the only) fun action movie of the summer—swift, funny, filled with actual stunts instead of digitized mayhem, and primed at a moment's notice for megaton ass-kicking.

When a body plummets down a stairwell or is hurled against a slot machine, it does so with conviction.

The spread of parkour into the woods of Georgia and the deserts of Arizona occurred almost entirely through the boundlessness of Internet message boards.

In Parkour, Climbing Walls Because They’re There

Virginia Postrel:

Through good times and bad, Americans predictably rack up consumer debt, and that debt predictably generates public and private hand-wringing about how it will ever get paid.

The evergreen story of people in debt becomes even sexier in an economic downturn, when debts inevitably get harder to pay.

Forms of credit may change, but credit anxiety, alas, does not.

The Case for Debt