No Cushion Against Hubris

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war."

-- Ernest Hemingway, Esquire magazine, September 1935

Not today, and not tomorrow: You can still spend your dollars and get value, as long as you are not traveling much in Europe or Japan.

It will not come next month, or next quarter: There is still time to covet and honor the American greenback as the strongest link of stability in the international financial system. You can still rely on your money, your banker and probably your broker, though you definitely want to keep an eye on your hedge fund manager.

But this is changing under our feet. The "golden moment" that enveloped the global economy for most of this decade is fading -- at least psychologically if not materially -- as we reach the end of an era of hubris in global affairs.

It is coming not just for Americans but for the populations of other developed economies. It is coming not just in U.S. military setbacks in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan but in a spreading lack of trust in the counting houses of Wall Street and the chanceries of the world's finance ministries.

And it is coming not just because President Bush will leave the White House next year, although that will help. The brash Texan has personified the global zeitgeist of his time: one of audacity curdling into hubris. He was elected to pursue a powerful nation's impulses and ambitions to be stronger and richer than any country in history, and he and his compatriots have pursued those dreams into the ditch.

His would-be successors know that one of them will oversee an epochal change in the conduct of world affairs. John McCain promises an era of correction. Barack Obama demands an urgent and complete overhaul in America's leadership style and programs. Hillary Clinton navigates between the two.

But all three seek a mandate to restore a commanding American leadership in global affairs that was taken for granted until recently. It began at the end of the Cold War and intensified as the United States undertook a 15-year leap in economic growth and productivity.

Any lingering assumptions about the ability of a single superpower to manage "the end of history" for the good of mankind are evaporating abroad as the Federal Reserve rushes through emergency measures and slashes interest rates to guard against a collapse of U.S. and European financial markets.