I'm reading a book about the end of the Roman Republic. Julius Caesar's legions rest on the banks of a small river in southern Gaul as their leader deliberates whether to lead them into Italy and toward Rome. To do so would break the law. In the end, he plunged into a contest to rule an empire, and Rome became a dictatorship for centuries to follow.
There are no legions poised on the Hudson to invade, but the pillars of a financial empire are tottering on the brink of collapse. After bailouts of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, federal regulators and the princes of Wall Street searched over the weekend for ways to avert a meltdown of New York financial giants Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and American International Group.
Their success or failure to prop up the financial pillars of the American financial empire could be no less consequential than Caesar wading through the waters of the Rubicon.
Wouldn't it be ironic if this nation, which built the most powerful and sophisticated military the world has ever known to ward off invasion from abroad, simply drowned in a sea of debt and bad investments?
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