How can this be?  How can we be both terrified at the prospect of immanent collapse, but fundamentally assured of our long-term success at the same time.  Why should we trust that the 'free market' will get deliver the goods again in the future, even though it currently needs dramatic rescue from the outside? The key metaphor here is 'clogging,' as in an obstruction.  Bush twice asserted that our basic problem is that "troubled assets" are "clogging the financial system."  The government's bailout plans are designed to remove this clog, so that money can start flowing through the system again, bringing wonderful prosperity to all.  The Fed is the grand roto-rooter.

This "clogging" motif is fairly powerful.  It gives the sense that once the bad mojo gets flushed out, everything will be fine again.  Bush's speech makes multiple reference to things returning to 'normal' once this brief storm is weathered. It's a nice thought, things returning to normal.  But let's not forget what normal has really been for the last few decades.  'Normal' means decades of wealth concentration, decades of longer hours worked for the same pay.  Normal has been skyrocketing housing and health care costs, disappearing pension funds, and higher commodity costs.  Normal has been the middle class getting their savings decimated by college tuition costs and soaring fuel prices.  Normal has brought us millions of Americans with zero or even negative net worth, with hyper-consumptive lifestyles that produce a culture of drugged, obese, ignorant, entertainment-obsessed narcissists.

There will be no return to 'normal,' because our current predicament is not just a matter of bad assets that need to be flushed through the system.  The financial crisis we're seeing right now is just one of a set of concentric circles of collapse, a topic which we will flesh out next time.