I was in New York through the horror of 9/11 and I well remember the sense of shock and “waiting for the other shoe to drop” in the days and weeks that followed. Although the whole nation and in fact most of the world reeled in sympathy, the gaping wound soon became a New York [...]

It’s no coincidence that the fifth and final season of the HBO cult hit The Wire—one of the smartest and toughest dramas to hit the small screen in decades—focused on the floundering of the city newspaper in the struggling city of Baltimore.
Newspapers are in big trouble in many countries, but they are in especially dire [...]

Where can we find true indicators of what’s happening now, so that we can help coherently shape our future? We all look to mainstream media, who relentlessly attempt to break down for us the multi-zero sums that are nearly impossible to comprehend. At the gym or the coffee shop, we hear people tell their own [...]

What happens to commitments of love in a time of economic angst? Watch the classic film “Cabaret,” set in Depression-era 1930s Berlin, for a clue to the mind-set that can occur when romance takes a backseat to survival. The show’s view of love in the song “Money”: “Money makes the world go around … But [...]

While BusinessWeek reports record attendance at Davos this year, some heads of state and business have their hands full at home—or are they staying away for the sake of image? Timothy Geithner had to be in Washington to face confirmation hearings Monday. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is at home dealing with his state’s financial shortfall, [...]

It’s been fascinating to watch the progress of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest release, “Outliers: The Story of Success” (out last November). In his 2000 book, “The Tipping Point,” Gladwell translated a previously obscure sociological notion in a way that resonated everywhere. His second book, “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” (2005), explored some people’s ability [...]

“Reboot.” By the end of last year it had become a buzzword, and it’s time to admit that the rescue until now hasn’t produced much. We’ve got to bite the bullet, and try to reboot. Here is one columnist’s opinion, just published in the U.K. Telegraph. Food for thought on the dire circumstances before us [...]

It’s not the obvious time to be talking about what’s going right in the auto industry, what with a U.S. federal bailout in progress and record falls in sales for virtually all brands. But unless life as we know it gets stuck on Pause forever, sooner or later people will start buying again. And when [...]

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The economic crisis has made everyone acutely aware of the risky, tenuous nature of global systems, and not just the financial ones. In the past, major economic crises (the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Great Depression) increased people’s appetite for change and their willingness to try something different in order to solve problems. Will [...]