Wall Street was scrambling last night to avoid a dramatic deepening of the financial crisis afflicting world markets.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, as S. N. Behrman documented in these pages, in his famous Profile of the art dealer Joseph Duveen, the same kind of inflationary bubble afflicted the world of Old Master art.
Among students of history, there are fears that we will suffer the type of chronic economic malaise that afflicted the world after the 1929 stock market crash, or that weakened Japan after the puncturing of twin stock and housing market bubbles around 1990.
The bottom line on Kennedy's performance that October nearly a half century ago has been well stated by historian Robert Dallek as "an imperishable example of how one man prevented a catastrophe that may yet afflict the world".
"The most serious evils afflicting the world," Francis told Mr. Scalfari, "are youth unemployment and the solitude to which many elderly people are consigned".
Indeed, his life tells a story that stands in direct opposition to the cynicism and hopelessness that so often afflicts our world.
"And here I think of the difficulties that, in various countries, today afflict the world of work and businesses," he told tens of thousands of people gathered for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.
It was thus tempting to conclude that Mr Koizumi had at long last chosen to take the banks' problems seriously, prodded into action by America and others frustrated at the decade-long policy paralysis afflicting the world's second-largest economy.
"The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old," Francis said, in a striking departure from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who focused on secularism and relativism as the great evils.
Whatever the economic vicissitudes that may afflict the world of luxury, some parts of the empire are bound to be making money.Mr Arnault's formula is not unique; he has simply developed it more highly than his closest competitors have done.
