Wall Street/Iraq War Mashup

Surprisingly little separates what's happening to the financial market and what happened during the run-up to the Iraq War, many years ago. Both are cases of folly followed by bailout. Both involve the White House asking for broad powers, to be accorded by a docile Congress as quickly as possible without bothering to subject the proposal to any scrutiny. In both cases, bystanders get ground up in the gears of history whilst the people who got it wrong, time and again, are not forced into any sort of reckoning. And there is no end in sight.

It makes sense that someone would find a way to express this connection artistically. And so we have this image, from Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok, which blends the satellite images of Colin Powell's famous presentation to the United Nations with the news of our current economic meltdown.

Naturally, one imagines that if Colin Powell were to walk onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with a vial of anthrax, he'd likely find a number of people yearning for the sweet release of death.