After the Crash

Sometimes surprises aren't all that surprising. Novelist and critic Walter Kirn put it nicely in the November issue of the Atlantic: "The abiding, distinctive feature of all crashes, whether in stock prices, housing values, or hit-TV-show ratings, is that they startle but don't surprise," he wrote. "When the euphoria subsides, when the volatile graph lines of excitability flatten and then curve down, people realize...that they've been expecting this correction. The signs were everywhere, the warnings clear, the researchers in rough agreement, and the stories down at the bar and in the office (our own stories included) revealed the same anxieties."

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