The Second Coming: A Statement on the Global Economy?

The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

1920

This poem popped into the head of economist Paul Krugman as he thought about the unraveling economy. Interpretations of William Butler Yeats' poem consider things like a failing empire. Sound familiar?

Sources:

Krugman Column that cites this poem, The Widening Gyre, October 26, 2008 (might require logging into the NY Times web page).

Image Credit: Ravensdawn

Excertpts from "I Can Taste It"

Alex, among the first group of soldiers in Iraq to have their tours extended three months*, is nearing the end of his duty,

Going home is a beautiful, terrifying thought to have once it gets this close to happening.

I’ll look back on the hysterical laughter during fifteen hour Baghdad clears, the terror of being pinned down by machine gun fire, the sight of a Stryker on its side and the unfolding of a body bag under the flames of a nearby school, unzipped tenderly to fit the body of Chevy as RPGs screamed overhead. Soon this place will all be in the past.

The key to it all [the surge] would be 24/7 interaction with Iraqi Army and a constant presence among the Iraqi citizens, giving them confidence in the mission of coalition forces. The building we picked used to be a whiskey distillery, and we’ve been busy putting up concrete barriers and wire around it. A house was too close to where the wall was supposed to be, so engineers blew it to smithereens and sent the family packing. The father owned the plot for forty years and comes by every so often to collect the useful bricks left scattered a hundred yards in every direction. Before he entered once, I patted his seventy year old frame down like a common criminal.

Next month we’ll be the first unit home that completed a three month extension. We were one of few to see Iraq before and after the surge. If the media got anything right, it was that the surge failed.

* One way the Pentagon increased the number of US soldiers inside Iraq during the surge was to make some soldiers stay in Iraq longer.

Sources:

Full Blog Entry on Army of Dude "I Can Taste It"