d'oh...

Dec. 23, 2008 The new edition of Foreign Affairs magazine has a pair of articles about the global financial mess that carry these disturbing headlines: "A Weakening of the West," reads one, and "The Rise of the Chinese Model" the other.Those two pieces frame a serious but little-discussed strategic problem for President-elect Barack Obama. The meltdown in financial markets hasn't simply damaged the American economy. It also has tarnished the U.S. economic model, and threatens to reduce Washington's ability to exert influence around the globe.
The "Anglo-Saxon brand of market-based capitalism" is under a cloud, Roger Altman, former U.S. deputy Treasury secretary and now chairman of Evercore Partners, writes in one of the Foreign Affairs pieces. "The U.S. financial system is seen as having failed." That can't be good for America's moral authority. –WSJ A2