MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2009 Copyright © 2009 The New York Times

Supplemento al numero

odierno de la Repubblica

Sped. abb. postale art. 1

legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma

LENS

Your plane plunges to the earth

with a terrifying crash. But somehow,

miraculously, you escape the flam-

ing wreckage. In your state of shock,

profoundly grateful to be alive, you

promise to make

changes. You’ll

quit cigarettes.

Spend more time

with your family.

Devote the rest of

your life to secur-

ing world peace.

A short time

later, you find

yourself living pretty much the same

way you always had.

Even a life-altering trauma is not

always enough to prompt lasting

changes in people’s lives, Michael Wil-

son wrote recently in The New York

Times. He cited the case of Mike Wil-

son, no relation, a workaholic software

designer, who said that after surviving

a plane crash in Denver, he vowed to

spend more time with his wife.

“Right after the incident, it was

kind of a high priority for me,” he said.

“Then the realities of life set in. I think

it’s really easy to fall back into those

old habits.”

As neuroscientists have discovered,

old habits become physically embed-

ded in people’s brains, as synapses

lock into near-permanent neural

pathways. But calcified brain patterns

or not, other recent Times articles dis-

close that in ways large and small the

human capacity for change can still

defy the odds.

Sometimes all it takes is a smile.

Power utilities in California, Chica-

go and Washington State have found

a simple way to counter the American

tendency to waste energy. By affixing

smiley faces — or glowering frowns —

to power bills, customers are goaded

into awareness of their electricity

consumption. The bills compare each

customer’s energy use to that of their

neighbors.

“It’s fundamental and primitive,”

Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist

at Arizona State University, told The

Times’s Leslie Kaufman. “The mere

perception of the normal behavior of

those around us is very powerful.”

The United States government has

committed billions of dollars to chang-

ing perceptions in the Middle East,

sometimes without much success. Yet

one of the lowest-cost tools has proven

to be the most effective, Michael Slack-

man wrote in The Times. Teaching

English to Egyptian teenagers can go

a long way in changing attitudes.

“Everything in my life is differ-

ent now,” said Manal Ade Ahmed,

a 16-year-old student from Asyut,

Egypt, a bastion of Islamic extremism.

Before her exposure to English, “I was

afraid to deal with anybody who was

different, I thought it was bad,” she

told Mr. Slackman. “Now, I think it is

important to get to know other people

and other cultures.”

But positive change can also come

from surprisingly small sources.

Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sun-

stein, authors of the book “Nudge,”

are experts in the field of behavioral

economics. They advocate gentle sug-

gestions — “nudges” — to help people

make better choices .

Mr. Thaler’s favorite example in-

volves images of the common house

fly etched into the urinals at the Am-

sterdam Airport. “Men evidently like

to aim at targets,” Mr. Thaler told The

Times’s Jeff Sommer, because after

the fly images were in place, “spillage”

on the men’s room floor decreased by

80 percent.

The fly images, Mr. Thaler said, “at-

tract people’s attention and alter their

behavior in a positive way, without ac-

tually requiring them to do anything."

It may not be on the order of Middle

Eastern peace or energy indepen-

dence, but cleaner restrooms are a

start. And a change we can all believe

in.

Getting Out of the Habit

For comments, write to nytweekly@nytimes.com.

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

PARIS

FROM LAWYERS IN Paris to factory workers in

China and bodyguards in Colombia, the ranks

of the jobless are swelling rapidly across the

globe.

Worldwide job losses from the recession that started

in the United States in December 2007 could hit a stag-

gering 50 million by the end of 2009, according to the

International Labor Organization, a United Nations

agency. The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million

American jobs.

High unemployment rates, especially among young

workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as

Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and con-

tributed to strikes in Britain and France.

In January, the government of Iceland, whose econ-

omy is expected to contract 10 percent this year, col-

lapsed and the prime minister moved up national elec-

tions after weeks of protests by Icelanders angered by

soaring unemployment and rising prices.

Just recently, the new United States director of na-

tional intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told Congress that

instability caused by the global economic crisis had

become the biggest security threat facing the United

States, outpacing terrorism.

“Nearly everybody has been caught by surprise at

the speed in which unemployment is increasing, and

are groping for a response,” said Nicolas Véron, a fellow

at Bruegel, a research center in Brussels that focuses

on Europe’s role in the global economy.

In emerging economies like those in Eastern Europe,

ADNAN ABIDI/REUTERS

JAVIER BARBANCHO/REUTERS

JOBLESSNESS SPREADS Protesters held a banner calling

for job protection in Sevilla, Spain. Policemen cast

shadows as they stood guard during a demonstration by

workers in New Delhi, India.Con tin ued on Page IV

Restless Workers

INTELLIGENCE: Troubles for the pope, Page III.

III VI VIIOBAMA’S WASHINGTON

Tests for the new

commander in chief.

MONEY & BUSINESS

Questioning whether

to spend or save.

SCIENCE & TECNOLOGY

Certain colors may

help performance.

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O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA R Y

II MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Mr. Obama and Russia

Animals Adjust to Warming

Outside the shrinking guild of scrib-

blers, it’s disappointingly hard to find

much sympathy for the beleaguered

newspaper industry. Only 18 percent

of Americans believe all or most of

what The New York Times publishes,

according to a poll last year by the Pew

Research Center. If the Internet is put-

ting us out of business, who cares?

It matters. The argument that if

newspapers go bust there will be no-

body covering city hall is true. It’s also

true that corruption will rise, legisla-

tion will more easily be captured by

vested interests and voter turnout

will fall.

In 1981, the Indian economist Am-

artya Sen argued that the famine

caused by China’s Great Leap For-

ward could never have happened in

India because the government could

not have ignored the plight of its peo-

ple. “Newspapers play an important

part in this,” he said.

From the poorest country to the

richest, a welter of academic research

since then points to the importance of

an independent press — mostly news-

papers — in disseminating hard-to-

get information, mobilizing the public

and putting pressure on government

and businesses in favor of the public

good.

During the Great Depression, the

Federal Emergency Relief Adminis-

tration doled out more money in coun-

ties with more radios. Today, Hispanic

voter turnout is higher where there is

a local Spanish-language TV station.

Companies in countries with a

larger daily newspaper circulation

are fairer to minority shareholders

and have a better record respond-

ing to environmental concerns. And

a 2000 study by Timothy Besley and

Robin Burgess of the London School

of Economics proved Sen to be right:

governments in India provide more

public food and disaster relief in hard

times in states where newspaper cir-

culation is higher.

It’s easy to forget the role of an in-

dependent press in the development

of democratic institutions. Through

much of the 19th century, newspapers

were mostly partisan mouthpieces.

But as circulation and advertising

grew, they shed political allegiances

and started competing for customers

by investigating corruption and tak-

ing up populist causes.

Claudia Goldin and Edward Glaeser

of Harvard University and Matthew

Gentzkow of the University of Chicago

found that between 1870 and 1920, the

share of political dailies that claimed

to be independent rose from 11 percent

to between 40 percent and 60 percent.

Corruption, measured by an index of

articles mentioning the topic in The

Times, plummeted by four-fifths over

this period.

From the creation of the Food and

Drug Administration to limits on

working hours, a lot of progressive-

era reforms might have failed without

an independent press. Luigi Zingales

of the University of Chicago, Alexan-

der Dyck of the University of Toronto

and David Moss of Harvard Business

School analyzed muckraking maga-

zines of the period, like McClure’s and

Collier’s.

The researchers found that repre-

sentatives in districts in which the

magazines had larger circulations

became more favorable to the populist

causes exposed in their articles.

These days, even the harshest

newspaper critics admit that citizens

need information. They argue that the

Internet will empower ordinary peo-

ple to do the task themselves, better.

I’m not so sure. In a recent study,

Mr. Gentzkow concluded that the in-

troduction of television in the 1940s

and 1950s was responsible for between

a quarter and a half of the decline in

voter turnout since then.

Some alternatives, like Politico.

com and ProPublica, an investigative

reporting outfit financed by philan-

thropy, do original journalism. But

they are tiny. And rather than a citi-

zen reporter, the Internet has given us

the citizen pundit, who comments on:

newspaper articles.

Reporting the news in far-flung

countries, spending weeks on inves-

tigations of uncertain payoff, fighting

for freedom of information in court

— is expensive. Virtually the only

entities still doing it on the necessary

scale are newspapers. Letting them

go on the expectation that the Inter-

net will enable a better-informed citi-

zenry seems like a risky bet.

Vice President Joseph Biden told a

European security conference earlier

this month that it was “time to press

the reset button” and revisit the many

areas where the United States and

Russia can work together. The next

day, Russia’s almost never concilia-

tory deputy prime minister, Sergei

Ivanov, embraced the overture.

We are relieved that Washington

and Moscow are talking about co-

operation. There is certainly a lot in

the relationship that needs resetting,

starting with reviving negotiations

to do away with thousands of nuclear

weapons. But pressing the reset but-

ton cannot mean absolving Vladimir

Putin’s Kremlin of its authoritarian

ways.

President George W. Bush spent

years looking the other way while

Mr. Putin harassed opponents, sti-

fled a free press and bullied Russia’s

neighbors. While he was busy looking

into Mr. Putin’s eyes, Mr. Bush also

ignored Russia’s list of grievances —

many illegitimate, but not all.

President Obama must not repeat ei-

ther mistake. The Russians have given

him fair warning of how difficult this

relationship could be. Just days before

Mr. Biden spoke, the Kremlin “en-

couraged” the former Soviet republic

of Kyrgyzstan — with a $2.15 billion

pledge of loans and aid — to give no-

tice that it is closing an American base

that supplies United States forces in

Afghanistan.

Arms control may be the most prom-

ising area for early progress. The 2002

Moscow treaty, Mr. Bush’s one and

only agreement, allows each coun-

try to deploy between 1,700 and 2,200

long-range nuclear weapons. They

could easily go to 1,000 weapons each.

A swift agreement also would send an

important signal to North Korea, Iran

and other potential nuclear scofflaws.

The administration also has begun

hinting that it may be open to some

compromise on Mr. Bush’s missile de-

fense system planned for Poland and

the Czech Republic. We are skeptical

that the technology is anywhere near

ready. We are also skeptical about the

Russians’ insistence that the system

poses any threat to their security. A

healthy dialogue on the subject is in

order.

The Kremlin has offered to assist

NATO with Afghanistan, President

Obama’s top security challenge. Mos-

cow has no love for the Taliban. And

that is certainly worth testing. But if

Washington has learned any lesson, it

is that it must have multiple options for

wartime supply routes — and Russia

cannot have a chokehold.

The administration also will have

to test whether Moscow will do more

to help end Iran’s nuclear program.

That, too, is in Russia’s clear strategic

interest, even though the Kremlin has

yet to see it.

So far Mr. Obama has been quiet

about Russia’s latest efforts to bully

its neighbors. He will have to find his

voice. After its war with Georgia last

year, Russia defied international law

by recognizing the independence of

Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It re-

cently went further and announced

plans to establish bases there. While

the Georgia dispute may not lend itself

to quick solution, Moscow must not be

allowed to think the world has acqui-

esced to its indefinite presence in Abk-

hazia and South Ossetia.

We’re not sure how Mr. Obama is go-

ing to find the right balance between

cooperating with the Kremlin and

avoiding enabling its bullying ways.

But that can be the only basis for a

sound relationship.

E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E S

There is an interesting and poten-

tially tragic purity in the way other

life forms respond to our warming

climate. They do not debate the mat-

ter. They simply shift as the contours

of their habitat shift. Even the distri-

bution of slow-moving species — like

trees — is changing. And more mobile

species? They offer vivid testimony

about the alterations in our world.

According to the Audubon Society,

data from the past 40 years of the an-

nual Christmas Bird Count — a three-

week census of American bird popula-

tions — shows a striking northward

movement among a majority of spe-

By now everyone knows the sad

tale of Bernard Madoff’s duped inves-

tors. They looked at their statements

and thought they were rich. But then,

one day, they discovered to their hor-

ror that their supposed wealth was a

figment of someone else’s imagina-

tion. Unfortunately, that’s a pretty

good metaphor for what happened to

America as a whole in the first decade

of the 21st century.

This month the Federal Reserve

released the results of the latest Sur-

vey of Consumer Finances, a trienni-

al report on the assets and liabilities

of American households. The bottom

line is that there has been basically

no wealth creation at all since the

turn of the millennium: the net worth

of the average American household,

adjusted for inflation, is lower now

than it was in 2001.

At one level this should come as no

surprise. For most of the last decade

America was a nation of borrowers

and spenders, not savers. The per-

sonal savings rate dropped from 9

percent in the 1980s to 5 percent in the

1990s, to just 0.6 percent from 2005 to

2007, and household debt grew much

faster than personal income. Why

should we have expected our net

worth to go up?

Yet until very recently Americans

believed they were getting richer,

because they received statements

saying that their houses and stock

portfolios were appreciating in value

faster than their debts were increas-

ing. And if the belief of many Ameri-

cans that they could count on capital

gains forever sounds naïve, it’s worth

remembering just how many influen-

tial voices — notably in right-leaning

publications like The Wall Street

Journal, Forbes and National Review

— promoted that belief, and ridiculed

those who worried about low savings

and high levels of debt.

Then reality struck, and it turned

out that the worriers had been right

all along. The surge in asset values

had been an illusion — but the surge

in debt had been real. So now we’re

in trouble — deeper trouble, I think,

than most people realize even now.

For this is a broad-based mess. Ev-

eryone talks about the problems of

the banks, which are indeed in even

worse shape than the rest of the sys-

tem. But the banks aren’t the only

players with too much debt and too

few assets; the same description ap-

plies to the private sector as a whole.

And as the great American econo-

mist Irving Fisher pointed out in the

1930s, the things people and compa-

nies do when they realize they

have too much debt tend to be

self-defeating when everyone

tries to do them at the same

time. Attempts to sell assets

and pay off debt deepen the

plunge in asset prices, fur-

ther reducing net worth. At-

tempts to save more translate

into a collapse of consumer

demand, deepening the eco-

nomic slump.

Are policy makers ready to

do what it takes to break this

vicious circle? In principle,

yes. Government officials un-

derstand the issue: we need

to “contain what is a very

damaging and potentially de-

flationary spiral,” says Law-

rence Summers, a top Obama

economic adviser.

In practice, however, the

policies currently on offer

don’t look adequate to the

challenge. If you want to see

what it really takes to boot the

economy out of a debt trap,

look at the large public works

program, otherwise known as

World War II, that ended the

Great Depression. The war

didn’t just lead to full employ-

ment. It also led to rapidly rising in-

comes and substantial inflation, all

with virtually no borrowing by the

private sector. By 1945 the govern-

ment’s debt had soared, but the ratio

of private-sector debt to gross do-

mestic product was only half what it

had been in 1940. And this low level of

private debt helped set the stage for

the great postwar boom.

Since nothing like that is on the

table, or seems likely to get on the

table any time soon, it will take years

for families and firms to work off the

debt they ran up so blithely. The odds

are that the legacy of our time of illu-

sion will be a long, painful slump.

PAUL KRUGMAN

And Now, We’ll Pay for It

Editorial Observer/EDUARDO PORTER

What Only Newspapers Will Do

PAUL HILTON/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Americans’ net wealth has fallensince 2001. Now, as they save and pay down debt, a “deflationary spiral” ispossible. A bank vault in Hong Kong.

CORRECTIONA letter from a reader in Kenya

that was included last week in the

section titled “Letters to the In-

ternational Weekly” misspelled

the surname of the writer. It is

Dominic Ndwiga, not Ndwgia.

cies.

The boreal chickadee has moved

450 kilometers north, almost out of the

range of the lower 48 states. The mar-

bled murrelet, a seabird that breeds in-

land, has moved 580 kilometers north.

The wild turkey has gone about 640.

These population shifts make it look

as though many bird species can eas-

ily adjust to a warming world. And

some of these shifts may be opportu-

nistic in nature — taking advantage

of open ground and new food sources

in regions that used to be snowed over

in winter. But ultimately birds cannot

migrate out of their habitats.

A boreal species pushed farther and

farther north comes eventually to the

end of the plants (which move far more

slowly) that it depends upon for food.

A grassland species cannot simply

decide to become a woodland species.

And the entire species mix that defines

suitable habitat is changing as well,

bringing with it the risk of extinction.

The important thing to remember

— as we notice an absence of purple

finches at our feeders — is that we are

not merely witnesses of these striking

shifts. We are the cause of them, and it

is our responsibility to do all we can to

mitigate them.

Repubblica NewYork

M O N E Y & B U S I N E S S

VI MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2009

DEC. 2008

3.6%

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

12 percent

9

6

3

0

3–

3

0

1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

Struggling to SaveThe personal savings rate has fallen greatly

since the early 1980s, but began to rise last year. In December the rate was

3.6 percent.

Monthly ratePERSONAL SAVINGS RATE

Average rate,over previous12 months

THE NEW YORK TIMES

By TIM ARANGO

In “Mad Men,” the critically loved

television show about the advertising

world in the era of martinis and mi-

sogyny in the 1960s, a founder of the

fictional advertising firm Rogers &

Sterling describes marketing glory.

“I’ll tell you what brilliance in ad-

vertising is,” says the actor John Slat-

tery in the character of Roger Ster-

ling. “99 cents.”

It may be just the insight retailers

are looking for as they struggle to

stimulate consumer spending in this

trying time: If you can’t sell some-

thing for 99 cents, you should at least

tack on .99 to the price.

Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive

of Apple Computer, tried the 99-cent

approach and arguably saved the mu-

sic industry from oblivion.

In picking that one standard price

for each song for sale on iTunes, Mr.

Jobs built a commercially viable digi-

tal delivery business for music. Be-

fore the start of iTunes in 2003, it was a

questionable proposition that people

would ever pay for music online when

they could steal it from any number of

peer-to-peer networks.

Dave Gold also tried it. In the 1960s,

he and his wife owned a liquor store in

Southern California where they sold

wine at various prices: 79 cents, 89

cents, 99 cents and $1.49.

“We always noticed that the 99

cents sold much better,” he recalled in

an interview.

They priced all their wine at 99

cents, and overall sales improved.

“The 79 cents sold better at 99, the

89 cents sold better at 99, and of course

the $1.49 sold better at 99,” he said.

Mr. Gold and his wife eventually

took the concept to the extreme and in

1982 started a chain of 99 Cents Only

stores. They took it public in 1996, and

today the company has 282 stores and

is worth more than half a billion dol-

lars. In the last quarter, sales were up

8 percent; profits, 31 percent.

Mr. Gold wasn’t the first to strike on

99 cents as a lucrative marketing gim-

mick, but he may have done the most

with it. No one quite knows who came

up with the concept. Regardless, the

marketplace power of .99 seems unde-

niable. But why?

Academics have offered a variety

of psychological explanations. One

study, by Robert M. Schindler, a pro-

fessor of marketing at the Rutgers

School of Business in New Jersey,

found that consumers “perceive a

9-ending price as a round-number

price with a small amount given

back.” Researchers have also found

that prices ending in .99 communicate

“low price” to consumers.

At the University of Chicago, re-

searchers found that when the price of

margarine dropped from 89 cents to

71 cents at a local grocery chain, sales

improved 65 percent, but that when

the price fell to 69 cents, sales rose 222

percent, according to Kenneth Wis-

niewski, an author of the study.

And Professor Schindler, in a study

at a women’s clothing retailer, found

that the one-penny difference be-

tween prices ending in .99 and .00

had “a considerable effect on sales,”

according to his study, with items

whose prices ended at .99 outselling

those ending at .00.

So when retailers price their wares

with a figure ending in 9, the reason is

simple, Professor Schindler said.

“It’s to make the price seem like it’s

less.”

In recent years, the American con-

sumer spent too much money. Bought

too much house, took on too much debt

and generally lived beyond his or her

means. Free-spending ways helped

cause the worst finan-

cial crisis since the

Great Depression.

And now they’re go-

ing to have to do their

part to end the crisis.

How? By spending.

Enough already with the saving that

many Americans have suddenly be-

gun doing. Congress and President

Obama are preparing to send them a

tax rebate, to inspire them to stimu-

late the economy, to spend as if the

future of the country depended on it.

John Maynard Keynes, the great

20th-century economist, would have

appreciated the apparent absurdity

in these mixed messages. He coined

a phrase, “the paradox of thrift,” to

point out that what was rational for an

individual during hard times — sav-

ing money — could be ruinous for an

entire economy. Eventually, many

of the savers may end up out of work

because everyone else is saving, too.

At his recent news conference, Mr.

Obama was asked directly whether

people should spend or save their re-

bate checks. He avoided the question.

Fortunately, though, it has an

answer. The first part involves figur-

ing out how to spend money now to

save money later — which can lift the

economy today and help individual

By MICHAEL J. de la MERCEDand ZACHERY KOUWE

Howard S. Marks is the sort of finan-

cier who Washington hopes will help fix

America’s troubled banks. The prob-

lem is, he is not sure he wants the job.

Mr. Marks is a former banker who

became a pioneer in the graveyard of

Wall Street. He is one of the biggest

players in distressed investing — put-

ting money into risky investments that

few others will touch.

But he and other potential investors

are wary of the risk in this case.

With its plan to shore up banks, the

Obama administration hopes to entice

investors like Mr. Marks, who has $55

billion at his command, to buy troubled

assets from the nation’s banks and en-

able them to make the loans needed to

jump-start the economy.

The administration hopes, in short,

to balance some of the fear gripping

the financial world with a bit of old-

fashioned greed. To combat the bust,

Washington wants to marshal some of

the same financiers who grew rich dur-

ing the boom: hedge fund managers

and corporate buyout specialists.

But Mr. Marks and other investors

like him said they were in no hurry to

wade into this mess. Distressed inves-

tors — “vultures” is the Wall Street

term for them — aim to buy invest-

ments on the cheap in hopes of reaping

big returns. Yet even for the vultures,

the risks seem daunting. Some worry

about being seen as profiteers who

benefit at taxpayers’ expense, even

though the economy could get worse

unless they swoop in.

“You have to ask whether this is an

attractive deal,” said Mr. Marks, the

chairman of Oaktree Capital Manage-

ment, a big money management firm in

Los Angeles. It all depends on the price,

the terms and the risks, he said.

Wall Street, of course, wants what it

always wants: a lot of potential profit on

the upside, and not much risk of losses

on the downside. But as Treasury Sec-

retary Timothy F. Geithner outlined

his sweeping rescue plan on February

10, the questions kept piling up.

What kind of assets would the banks

sell, and at what price? What role

would the government play? And, of

course, the big one: what are these

investments really worth? The banks

themselves are struggling to place val-

ues on them.

Hundreds of billions of dollars of

these assets are hanging over banks.

Until there is a clear way to purge them,

the industry and the broader economy

are likely to languish.

That is where the vultures come in.

Hedge funds and other institutions

dominate the field of distressed invest-

ing, and they are known for driving

hard bargains. In recent weeks, sev-

eral prominent hedge fund managers

met with Lawrence H. Summers, the

head of the National Economic Council,

to discuss their interest in the planned

public-private partnership.

Few of these investors were willing

to discuss their plans publicly. Some

worried that their own investors, which

include large public pension funds,

might view the potential investments

as too risky.

But if the vultures do alight, their

rewards could be enormous. Funds

specializing in distressed investments

earned annual returns of more than 30

percent in the early 1990s as the econo-

my pulled out of recession.

One model might be the government-

brokered sale of IndyMac Bancorp, the

California mortgage lender that failed

last summer. IndyMac was bought by

a group of private firms last month for

$13.9 billion. As part of the deal, the in-

vestors agreed to assume the first 20

percent of the bank’s losses, while the

government picked up the rest.

Another issue is the price at which

troubled assets would be valued.

While potential investors want to buy

as cheaply as possible, the banks might

have to take debilitating write-downs

if they sold at fire-sale prices. Such an

outcome might not be in the interests of

the government or taxpayers.

How the ‘Paradox of Thrift’ Affects a Recovery

DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Researchers have found that retail prices that end in .99 encourage consumers to buy more.

DAVID

LEONHARDT

ECONOMICSCENE

The Price Is Right When It’s at 99 CentsFinanciers fear earning public scorn if theymake big profits.

Wall Street ‘Vultures’ Eye A Mountain of Bad Assets

households cope with their battered

finances in the long run. The second

part involves realizing that Keynes’s

paradox isn’t ironclad. In a crisis,

when banks may need capital as much

as retailers need business, many

people can save without guilt.

Besides developing the most fa-

mous prescription for curing down-

turns, Keynes can also be considered

the godfather of behavioral econom-

ics, as the columnist David Ignatius

recently wrote. While other econo-

mists obsessed over statistical models

that treated people as hyperrational

automatons, Keynes wrote about “an-

imal spirits.’’ He helped explain how

psychology shaped economics.

Psychology-tinged economics —

that is, behavioral economics — has

taken off in the last two decades, and

one of its central findings is that most

people do not do a good job of planning

for the future. They aren’t nearly as

nice to their “future self,” as econo-

mists say, as to their “present self.”

They eat just one more doughnut

and put off exercising until tomorrow

and tomorrow and tomorrow. They

fail to set aside enough for retirement.

These habits end up causing a lot

of trouble. But they also present an

opportunity in a time like this. Most

people could save themselves a good

bit of money by giving proper respect

to their future self. They could spend a

little now and save a lot later.

I asked behavioral economists for

some examples, and they helped me

make a list. Parents of young children

can pay to join a large retail store that

offers member discounts and make up

their membership fee with just a few

months of diaper purchases. Drivers

can inflate their tires, change their air

and fuel filters and get better gas mile-

age. Frequent book buyers can buy

the new Kindle; it costs $359, but most

new books then cost less than $10.

In these cases — and, no doubt,

many others — the initial investment

tends to pay off quickly, sometimes in

mere months. That’s why such spend-

ing is perfectly suited to the moment.

It will keep people employed or create

new jobs when the economy needs the

help. But it will also shore up house-

holds’ finances.

The one big caveat is that some peo-

ple will feel that they can’t afford to lay

out an extra $50 or $100 right now.

Millions of workers have already

lost their jobs, and many others sim-

ply want to cut back. In December,

households saved an average of 3.6

percent of their disposable income, up

from about 1 percent in recent years.

In a normal recession, this new sav-

ing would have a lot more downside

than upside, just as Keynes explained.

But this recession is different. It has

been caused by a financial crisis. If

Americans don’t get their finances in

better shape banks will remain afraid

to lend, and the recession will linger.

Even more immediately, banks

need to get their own finances in or-

der.

Repubblica NewYork

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By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — We’re about to find out

what the Obama Factor is worth around the

world.

The Factor is all the good will, popular sup-

port and considerable charm that Barack

Obama has brought to the Oval Office.

At home, it’s still potent. But abroad, it’s

questionable how far Mr. Obama can travel on

promises to act as the anti-Bush, to use diplo-

macy and “smart power” before blunt force.

Some of his aides acknowledge that those

promises will eventually collide with necessi-

ties to defend American interests.

Here’s a look at some of the opening moves,

and how they may play out:

SEEKING HELP IN AFGHANISTAN Now that

Europeans have been softened up by declara-

tions about closing Guantánamo and initia-

tives on global warming, European govern-

ments and other allies are receiving requests

for their assessment of what is needed in

Afghanistan.

“It’s clever and of course it’s what we’ve

asked for: Input about a policy before it’s

settled and we read about it in your news-

paper,” one ambassador whose country has

more than a thousand troops in Afghanistan

said recently. “But you can see a few muscles

tensing because everyone knows what’s com-

ing next.”

What’s coming is Mr. Obama’s insistence

that the countries that have developed the

strategy now contribute the additional troops

and resources it requires. That is what George

W. Bush never got: The “coalition of the will-

ing” quickly exited Iraq, and public pressure

is building in Europe to do the same in Af-

ghanistan.

MULLING DIPLOMACY WITH IRAN During

the campaign, Mr. Obama’s discussion of Iran

became shorthand for his declaration of a new

era of diplomacy, one that stresses engagement

rather than (or at least before) confrontation.

And that process has started.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama also said

the world could never tolerate Iran’s posses-

sion of nuclear weapons or ability to build

them on short notice. Does that mean he will

demand, as the Bush administration did un-

successfully, that every centrifuge shut down?

The best estimates are that Iran already has

roughly 5,000 spinning, nearly enough to

make fuel for two weapons a year if it is fur-

ther enriched to weapons grade.

So maybe the best Mr. Obama can hope for is

to freeze the enrichment process short of weap-

ons-grade fuel, and trust that inspectors will

spot any cheating. In that case, does he also de-

mand access to the 10 to 15 sites that American

intelligence agencies believe might be secret

locations for enrichment or weapons design?

NEEDING CHINA’S LARGESSE What really

changes the dynamic with China isn’t Mr.

Obama’s goals or personal qualities, as much

as the stimulus plan. It’s the Chinese whom

the Treasury is counting on to lend the United

States much of that $787 billion.

The bad news is that a need to borrow Chi-

na’s real capital could cost Mr. Obama in po-

litical capital as he and China’s leaders haggle

over North Korea or climate change.

That is only one of the ways the global eco-

nomic crisis is changing the power map of

the world. Dennis C. Blair, the new director

of national intelligence, reminded the Senate

recently that the Depression and the war that

followed were linked. While he did not predict

the rise of another Hitler, he warned darkly

that “all of us recall the dramatic political con-

sequences wrought by the economic turmoil

of the 1920s and 1930s, the instability and high

levels of violent extremism.”

A pessimist might call that the Meltdown

Factor, and wonder if the Obama Factor is its

equal.

By JOHN HARWOOD

WASHINGTON — Few remember the early

travails of Franklin Roosevelt after he swept 57

percent of the vote and all but six states against

Herbert Hoover in 1932. But political insiders

scorned his extended post-election passivity —

presidents weren’t inaugurated until March then

— including a Caribbean yacht cruise while the

Great Depression festered.

“By early February, the president-elect was in

political trouble,” Jonathan Alter wrote in “The

Defining Moment,” his history of F.D.R.’s first

100 days. And then Roosevelt executed a demon-

stration of leadership that lifted

the nation’s spirits, swept his

New Deal agenda through Con-

gress and durably transformed

the federal role in American

society.

In other words, it may not be

too early to ask whether Tom

Daschle’s tax problems, Judd

Gregg’s ideological misgivings

about joining the cabinet, Wall

Street’s resistance and the

near-complete Republican re-

jection of an economic stimulus

package add up to the depletion

of President Obama’s momen-

tum. But it is too early to answer

with much confidence.

Presidential strength is an

elusive and ephemeral force

that flows from many sources. It derives largely

from numbers: the size of the election victory, the

poll ratings, the breadth of partisan support in

Congress. By those measures, Mr. Obama’s 53

percent popular vote majority, mid-60 percent

job approval ratings, and solid House and Senate

majorities compare favorably at this stage with

the profile of any new president since World War

II.

But the sustainability of those power gauges

can be inversely related to the scale of the politi-

cal challenges a president faces. The recession

and two wars facing Mr. Obama easily match

the stagflation and cold war challenges that con-

fronted Ronald Reagan in 1981, and may exceed

those of any predecessor since F.D.R.

Moreover, presidential momentum can drain

rapidly — or replenish — depending on un-

planned events.

After John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Rich-

ard Nixon in 1960, Americans rallied behind him;

his initial 72 percent job approval rating was the

highest Gallup has recorded for a new president,

before or since.

Mr. Kennedy retained that high standing

through his first 100 days, despite the disastrous

Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in

April 1961. Yet the victories he

achieved from a Democratic

Congress remained modest.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan need-

ed every bit of his political capi-

tal — and some good will from

an assassination attempt — to

win his package of deep tax and

budget cuts.

“Reagan had great momen-

tum, and even greater mo-

mentum after he came back

from being shot,” recalled his

speechwriter Ken Khachigian.

“Still, there was resistance.”

In Roosevelt’s case, it was the

application of supple leadership

skills to a public terrified of fi-

nancial ruin that allowed him

to win all 15 items on his 100-days priority list;

the Emergency Banking Act swept through the

House by voice vote.

Aides hope that Mr. Obama’s confident style

and attractive young family may similarly help

provide a measure of political buoyancy apart

from legislative debates over financial regula-

tion, health care or energy.

“Obama has no choice but to spend his capi-

tal now,” said the Republican media consultant

Mark McKinnon. “The success of his first term

will be almost solely determined by whether he

can return the country’s economic footing.”

HASAN SARBAKHSHIAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,will test President Obama.

NEWS ANALYSIS

World Will TestA New Chief

Flexing Those Presidential Muscles

VIENNA, Austria

With the recent attack on a synagogue in

Caracas, the anti-Jewish undertones of criti-

cism of Israel in the Arab world, and the unsa-

vory mixture of Holocaust denial and threats

against the Jewish state from Iran, now would

be a good time for the Roman Catholic pope to

denounce the repugnant nature of anti-Semi-

tism, as he has done several times, but also to

show it with his actions.

But so far, Pope Benedict XVI has not done

that.

“Shadows and mistrust” darken the rela-

tions between Judaism and the church, as

the Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi,

said. The latest crisis was precipitated by the

lifting of the excommunication of Bishop Rich-

ard Williamson, a Briton who has denied the

existence of the Nazi gas chambers. The pope

quickly demanded that Bishop Williamson

take back his statements, but the damage had

been done.

After Bishop Williamson’s rehabilitation,

many Catholics renounced their faith, espe-

cially in Germany, Benedict’s place of birth.

Members of the clergy in Germany and Austria

publicly disavowed the Vatican’s decision even

if they stopped short of criticizing the pope di-

rectly.

Bishop Williamson is one of four bishops

whom Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre conse-

crated illicitly in 1988: illicitly because Lefeb-

vre and his breakaway Society of Saint Pius X

had been suspended by the Vatican for reject-

ing the decisions of the Second Vatican Council

(1962-1965) as too progressive. They were ex-

communicated by Pope John Paul II but Bene-

dict reversed that decision, citing the need for

mending this split in the church. Tolerance of

ultraconservative Catholics seems to outweigh

other concerns.

Relations between Benedict and Jews have

been strained ever since he decided two years

ago to allow the Latin Mass again. This conces-

sion to conservatives and reactionaries was

considered an affront by many Jews. In an old

version of the rite, Catholics prayed for the con-

version of the “unfaithful” Jews. This was later

modified into a prayer for the “illumination” of

Jews, but was not completely abolished. One

American sociologist, Daniel Jonah Goldha-

gen, argues that Catholic doctrine was partly

to blame for the Holocaust.

Pope Benedict seems to lack the right touch

to foster better relations with other religions.

When in 2006 he quoted a 14th century Byzan-

tine emperor condemning Islam without put-

ting this judgment into historical perspective,

he worsened tensions with Muslims. And he

inflicted damage to ecumenical efforts in 2007

when he suggested that Protestant faiths “are

not true churches.”

Before becoming pope, Cardinal Josef Ratz-

inger earned a reputation as a conservative

hard-liner. Some Catholics have seen their

worst expectations exceeded: Austrians were

taken aback when Pope Benedict elevated to

bishop a parish priest named Gerhard Maria

Wagner, who once described Hurricane Ka-

trina as God’s punishment of New Orleans

because of its bordellos and abortion clinics, or

warned children not to read Harry Potter be-

cause they would be exposed to Satanism.

Catholic priests began collecting signatures

for a petition to the Vatican to revoke Father

Wagner’s appointment as auxiliary bishop in

Linz. And some Austrian Protestant congrega-

tions reported being overwhelmed by requests

from Catholics who wanted to convert.

On February 15, only two weeks after his

designation, Father Wagner himself asked the

Vatican to be released from the task.

At least one church official is paying for his

intemperate remarks.

Gudrun Harrer is an analyst and editorialwriter at Der Standard in Vienna, Austria.Send comments to intelligence@nytimes.com.

INTELLIGENCE/GUDRUN HARRER

The Pope’s Religious Travails

RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

President Obama rallied support for his stimulus plan in Fort Myers, Florida.

Repubblica NewYork

S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O GY

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2009 VII

There are moments when I feel

I have spent large parts of my pro-

fessional life dropping off my own

marginally ill children at school

(or at day care) and then hurrying

to work to examine

children who are

notably less sick

but have been kept

home by their par-

ents and brought to

see the doctor.

I’m talking about the common

cold, the lingering nasal drips and

irritated coughs that mark our chil-

dren’s passage through the varied

mix of respiratory viruses — or

perhaps mark the viruses’ passage

through our children.

What I’m not talking about is

childhood fever. The child with

fever clearly needs to stay home, as

does the child who is vomiting or is

just plain miserable.

On the other hand, I do remember

getting several calls from day-care

directors or school nurses to inform

me that although my child seemed

happy and active, there was in fact

a lurking fever — and I remember

stifling the question, what kind of

zealot takes the temperature of a

happy, active child?

But of course, they were worrying

about the other children. And that It

is a fair question with any child who

is borderline sick: who is infectious,

what’s the risk, and is there any-

thing we can do to reduce it?

Doctors, as a group, are big

believers in sending children to

school. Every doctor I’ve talked to

is more concerned about children

unnecessarily missing school than

about their posing an infection risk

to their classmates.

What do we know about the

common cold, and about how it is

transmitted? Just how infectious is

that child whose cough hangs on for

weeks? And how about the one with

the drippy nose?

One problem is that there are

many different viruses.

Dr. Caroline Breese Hall, a pro-

fessor of pediatrics and medicine at

the University of Rochester in New

York state, has a particular interest

in the transmission of viruses. She

said children with viral infections

can be infectious before they show

symptoms. On the other hand, some

children can cough for weeks, not

because there are still viral par-

ticles but because the virus has af-

fected the lining of their lungs.

So you can have a child with no

symptoms who is shedding virus,

a coughing child who is no longer

shedding virus, and infection by

viral particles that lurk on surfaces

and objects. “It’s not practical to

keep everybody out who’s shedding

virus — that’s everybody all winter

long,” said Dr. Robert Tolan, chief

of the division of allergy, immunol-

ogy and infectious diseases at the

Children’s Hospital at St. Peter’s

University Hospital in New Jersey.

How, then, do you reduce infec-

tions? “The only thing we can really

show well in infection control is

hand washing,” Dr. Hall said. “Even

for those viruses that are spread by

aerosol” — through the air.

What really excites the experts

is the possibility of instituting

infection-control measures in the

schools: hand washing, but maybe

also dispensers for hand sanitizer,

faucets that turn on automatically,

bathroom doors that open when you

approach them.

It is precisely those kinds of in-

fection-control measures on which

we clinic personnel rely to keep

ourselves healthy and do our jobs

— and which will do a lot to keep

schoolchildren from getting sick.

By PAM BELLUCK

Amanda Kitts lost her left arm in a

car accident three years ago, but these

days she plays football with her son,

and changes diapers and hugs children

at the three day care centers she owns

in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Ms. Kitts, 40, does this all with a new

kind of artificial arm that moves more

easily than other devices and that she

can control by using only her thoughts.

“I’m able to move my hand, wrist and

elbow all at the same time,” she said.

“You think, and then your muscles

move.”

Her agility is the result of a new pro-

cedure that is allows people to move

prosthetic arms more automatically

than ever before, simply by using re-

wired nerves and their brains.

The technique, called targeted mus-

cle reinnervation, involves taking the

nerves that remain after an arm is am-

putated and connecting them to anoth-

er muscle, often in the chest. Electrodes

are placed over the chest muscles,

acting as antennae. When the person

wants to move the arm, the brain sends

signals that first contract the chest

muscles, which send an electrical sig-

nal to the prosthetic arm, instructing it

to move. The process requires no more

conscious effort than it would for a per-

son who has a natural arm.

Researchers reported February 10 in

the online edition of The Journal of the

American Medical Association that

they had taken the technique further,

making it possible to perform 10 hand,

wrist and elbow movements, a big im-

provement over the typical prosthetic

repertoire of bending the elbow, turn-

ing the wrist, and opening and closing

the hand.

“It’s dramatically impacted the field,”

said Stuart Harshbarger, a biomedical

engineer at Johns Hopkins University

in Maryland who is the program man-

ager for a military-financed prosthetics

study. “The ability to control a pretty

robust prosthetic limb has surprised

everyone with how good it is.”

Typically, a person with a prosthetic

arm can make only a few motions, of-

ten so slowly that many people use the

arms only for limited activities. There

is a separate motor for each movement,

said Gerald E. Loeb, a professor of bio-

medical engineering at the University

of Southern California, “and that motor

has to be explicitly controlled,” usually

by the person consciously contracting

muscles in the back or biceps.

Before Ms. Kitts had the reinnerva-

tion procedure in October 2007, she had

to move her back muscles a certain way

to make the wrist rotate, and flex her

triceps and biceps to move the elbow

up and down. “It was a lot of work,” she

said. “It wasn’t useful to me at all.”

The reinnervation method is part

of a recent explosion of new ideas and

techniques being explored as scien-

tists try to help people better compen-

sate for missing limbs or paralysis.

The drive is being fueled by increas-

ing amputations from diabetes and

military injuries and by advances in

technology.

Efforts under way include more

flexible and sensitive skin and arm

designs, and wireless devices in pros-

thetic arms to allow more natural

movement. Researchers have also

used sensors in the brain to enable

monkeys to control a mechanical arm,

and a paralyzed man to move a cursor

on a computer screen.

Some of these methods, if perfected

and if approved by regulatory agen-

cies, may eventually become more vi-

able for amputees. And while the rein-

nervation technique does not require

regulatory approval because it is done

with surgery and existing devices, it

has limitations, including that it cost-

ly, not possible for every patient, and

takes months for the rewired nerves to

grow and become effective.

Still, experts say it is the most ad-

vanced system being used in actual

patients that allows the nervous sys-

tem to directly control movement of an

artificial arm. Since it was pioneered in

2001 by Todd Kuiken, a physiatrist and

biomedical engineer at the Rehabilita-

tion Institute of Chicago, it has been

performed on about 30 people in the

United States, Canada and Europe.

Daniel Acosta, 25, an Air Force vet-

eran who was injured by a roadside ex-

plosive in Iraq in 2005, had the proce-

dure last year, and said his prosthetic

left arm moved “a lot faster” and more

naturally. “The difference is I’m not re-

ally thinking about it,” he said. “I kind

of just do it.”

“You care for nothing but shooting,

dogs and rat-catching,” Robert Dar-

win told his son, “and you will be a dis-

grace to yourself and all your family.”

Yet the feckless boy is everywhere.

Charles Darwin gets

so much credit, we

can’t distinguish evo-

lution from him.

Equating evolution

with Darwin, who was

born 200 years ago this

month, ignores 150 years of discover-

ies, including most of what scientists

understand about evolution. Such as:

Gregor Mendel’s patterns of hered-

ity; the discovery of DNA; studies

documenting evolution in nature; and

more.

By propounding “Darwinism,”

even scientists perpetuate a notion

that evolution is about one man, one

“theory.” The Buddhist master Lin

Chi said, “If you meet the Buddha on

the road, kill him.” The point is that

making a master teacher into a sacred

fetish misses the essence of his teach-

ing. So let us now kill Darwin.

That all life is related by common

ancestry, and that populations change

form over time, are the broad strokes

and fine brushwork of evolution. The

idea was not new. Darwin’s grandfa-

ther, and others, believed new species

evolved. Farmers and fanciers con-

tinually created new plant and animal

varieties by selecting who survived to

breed. All Darwin perceived was that

selection must work in nature, too.

In 1859, after more than 20 years of

writing and thinking, Darwin’s per-

ception and evidence became “On the

Origin of Species by Means of Natural

Selection, or The Preservation of Fa-

vored Races in the Struggle for Life.”

Charles Darwin had an idea, not

an ideology. Almost everything we

understand about evolution came

after Darwin, not from him. He knew

nothing of heredity or genetics, both

crucial to evolution. Evolution wasn’t

even Darwin’s idea.

Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus be-

lieved life evolved from a single ances-

tor. “Shall we conjecture that one and

the same kind of living filaments is

and has been the cause of all organic

life?” he wrote in “Zoonomia” in 1794.

He just couldn’t figure out how.

Charles Darwin was after the

how. Thinking about farmers’ selec-

tive breeding, considering the high

mortality of seeds and wild animals,

he surmised that natural conditions

acted as a filter determining which

individuals survived to breed more

individuals like themselves. He called

this filter “natural selection.”

What Darwin had to say about evo-

lution basically begins

and ends right there.

He took the tiniest step

beyond common knowl-

edge. Yet because he

perceived — correctly

— a mechanism by

which life diversifies, his

insight packed sweeping

power.

Gregor Mendel, an

Austrian monk, discov-

ered that in pea plants

inheritance of individual

traits followed patterns.

Superiors burned his papers posthu-

mously in 1884. Not until Mendel’s re-

discovered “genetics” met Darwin’s

natural selection in the “modern syn-

thesis” of the 1920s did science take

a giant step toward understanding

evolutionary mechanics.

Darwin’s intellect, humility and

prescience astonish more as scien-

tists clarify how much he got right.

But only when we fully acknowledge

the subsequent century and a half of

knowledge can we really appreciate

both Darwin’s genius and the fact that

evolution is life’s driving force, with or

without Darwin.

SHAWN POYNTER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ESSAY

CARLSAFINA

Artificial Arms Learn To Obey the Brain

For Evolution to Live, Darwinism Must Die

The Cough and Sniffle Puzzle:

When to Keep a Child Home?

THOMAS POROSTOCKY

ESSAY

PERRIKLASS M.D.

Washing hands is better protection thanmissing school.

Those with missing limbs can think, and a device will respond.

Amanda Kitts lost her arm in a car accidentin 2006, but a new kind ofprosthesis allowsher to tie shoes at her child care center.

Repubblica NewYork

A R T S & S T Y L E S

VIII MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2009

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

For 400 years humans have stood on

stages and conveyed passion through

song. Great buildings were raised for

them to perform in. The titled and the

rich paid homage with cash and devo-

tion.

Opera, that most electrifying of the

high arts, has remained remarkably

unchanged in its history, adapting to

bigger houses, electric lights, elec-

tronic stage machinery, the recording

industry. It has persevered despite

waves of new claims on our attention,

from television to Twitter.

But now another force has emerged,

which has the potential to transform

how opera is produced and received.

You can check it out at your local mov-

ie theater.

Thanks largely to the efforts of the

Metropolitan Opera in New York,

hundreds of thousands of people

worldwide are seeing live opera per-

formances in movie theaters, and

many others in repeat showings. A

dozen other opera companies are now

sending out broadcasts of their own.

Yet despite the general acclaim for

the Met’s innovation, introduced and

championed by its general manager,

Peter Gelb, a few voices have raised

concerns about long-term effects on

the art form.

The dissenters say that the move-

ment will lead to more conservative

programming; that the voice will

become subservient to appearance;

that listeners will be trained to hear

something electronic and lose an ap-

preciation for a live experience. Some

worry that vocal training will change,

de-emphasizing the ability to project,

and that the Met’s effort is a deal with

the Devil, because it will divert audi-

ences from local opera houses.

“Let’s go on with the cinema, but

I have to make now a proposition

to Peter Gelb and the Metropolitan

Opera,” Gerard Mortier, the Belgian

impresario, said in a speech last June

at a conference of opera managers in

Denver that stands as the skeptics’

cri de coeur. “Why go to the cinema?

Come to the opera.”

But such voices are a minority as

the broadcasts gain popularity.

The Royal Opera House in London

plans to transmit 10 opera and ballet

performances in Europe this season

and another 18 outside the continent.

The Italian opera houses of Parma,

Florence, Venice, Bologna and Milan,

through the distributor Emerging

Pictures, are beaming their produc-

tions. The Teatro Alla Scala in Milan

broadcast its gala opening night, a

performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlo,”

live on December 7.

Late in January the Met surpassed

a million ticket sales for the season,

with 3 of the 11 planned broadcasts

still to go. That already exceeds the

expected total of 850,000 operagoers

who will attend the 220 performances

given at the house.

The most recent broadcast, of Doni-

zetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” star-

ring Anna Netrebko, was seen in 31

countries in roughly 850 theaters.

At a broadcast of Massenet’s

“Thaïs” in Bensalem, Pennsylvania,

in early December, the 207 red high-

backed seats of a theater in a shop-

ping mall were filled. Many patrons

had arrived an hour before to secure

the best spots. Tickets cost $22. (At

the Met, tickets for a matinee range

from about $30 to almost $300.)

Two former Met subscribers, Rich-

ard and Betty Ringenwald of Delan-

co, New Jersey, were there. Driving

to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln

Center in Manhattan had become too

burdensome, Ms. Ringenwald said.

“You can see everything up close and

personal, as if you’re the only person

in the theater.”

The Met points out that the host of

each broadcast now urges viewers to

visit their local opera houses.

One prominent singing teacher,

Marlena Malas of the Juilliard School

in New York, sounded conflicted. She

praised the Met for attracting new

audiences and attention to opera but

worried that singing increasingly for

microphones would distract artists,

and listeners, from the beauty of the

sound, language and style of great

singing. “I’m probably overreacting

to it,” she said, “but I want to maintain

its integrity.”

NEW YORK — The contemporary

art market is a vulnerable organism,

traditionally hit early and hard by

economic malaise. That’s what’s hap-

pening now. The boom that was is no

more.

Anyone with memo-

ries of recessions in

the 1970s and ’80s

knows we’ve been

here before, though

not exactly here. There

are reasons to think the present cri-

sis is broader and deeper. Yet those

memories lend a hopeful spin to that

thought: as has been true before, a fi-

nancial setback can be good for art.

“Quality,” primarily defined as

formal skill, is back in vogue. And it

has given us a flood of pictures, sculp-

tures, photographs and staged spec-

tacles. The ideas don’t vary much.

Art in New York has not always

been so soothing an affair, and will

not continue to be if a recession clears

space for other things. This has hap-

pened more than once in the recent

past. Art has changed as a result.

The first real contemporary boom

was in the early 1960s. Cash was

abundant. Pop was hot. But the boom

was short. The Vietnam War and rac-

ism were ripping America apart. The

economy tanked. With virtually no

commercial infrastructure for experi-

mental art in place, artists had to cre-

ate their own marginal model.

They moved, often illegally, into the

derelict industrial area now called

SoHo, and made art from what they

found there. Trisha Brown choreo-

graphed dances for factory rooftops;

Gordon Matta-Clark turned archi-

tecture into sculpture by slicing out

pieces of walls.

An artist named Jeffrey Lew turned

the ground floor of his building into a

studio and exhibition space. People

came, working with scrap metal,

cast-off wood and cloth, dirt, lights,

mirrors, video. New genres — instal-

lation, performance — were invented.

White Columns, as the place came to

called, became a prototype for a crop

of nonprofit alternative spaces that

sprang up across America.

The ’70s economy stabilized,

and SoHo real estate prices rose. A

younger generation of artists couldn’t

afford to live there and went to the

Lower East Side and the South Bronx.

Again the energy was collective, but

the mix was different: young art-

school graduates , street artists like

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Fab Five

Freddy Braithwaite, punk-rebel types

like Richard Hell and plain rebels like

David Wojnarowicz.

Here too the aesthetic was impro-

visatory. Everybody did everything

— painting, writing, performing,

filming, photocopying zines, playing

in bands — and new forms arrived,

including hip-hop, graffiti, No Wave

cinema, appropriation art and the first

definable body of “out” queer art.

But again the moment was brief.

The Reagan economy was creating

vast wealth, and the East Village

became a brand name. Suddenly gal-

leries were filled with expensive little

paintings and objects similar in vari-

ety and finesse to the galleries in Chel-

sea now. They sold. Careers soared.

But the spark was long gone.

After Black Monday in October 1987,

the art was gone, too. Entrenched bar-

riers came down. Black, Latino and

Asian-American artists took center

stage and fundamentally redefined

American art. Gay and lesbian artists

commanded visibility.

And thanks to multiculturalism and

the digital revolution, the American

art world in the ’90s was in touch

with developments in Africa, Asia

and South America. For the first time

contemporary art was acknowledged

to be not just a Euro-American but an

international phenomenon.

Which brings us to the present

decade, threatening to end in a drawn-

out collapse. If the example of past

crises holds true, artists can take over

the factory, make the art industry

their own. Collectively and individual-

ly they can customize the machinery,

alter the modes of distribution, adjust

the rate of production to allow for

organic growth, for shifts in purpose

and direction.

In the 21st century New York is just

one more art town among many, and

no longer a particularly influential

one. Contemporary art belongs to the

world.

I’m not talking about creating ’60s-

style utopias. I’m talking about carv-

ing out a place in the larger culture

where abnormality can be sustained,

where imagining the unknowable —

impossible to buy or sell — is the pri-

mary enterprise. Crazy! says anyone

with an ounce of business sense.

Right. Exactly. Crazy.

The Boom Is Over.Long Live the Art!

KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

HOLLAND

COTTER

ESSAY

ONLINE: VIDEO

An excerpt from the MetropolitanOpera production of “Lucia diLammermoor,” which was screenedat movie theaters: nytimes.com/music

Purists’ Agitation Over Opera at the Movies

Julia Roberts: Mom, Stage Actress and, Once Again, Leading Lady

MICHAEL NAGLE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; BELOW, MIKE MERGEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

SOTHEBY’S/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Damien Hirst’s “Golden Calf” sold for $18.6 million last year, but the art climate has changed.

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — In the last eight

years, Julia Roberts has become a moth-

er, dabbled on Broadway (in “Three Days

of Rain”) and provided the voice for both

a spider (in “Charlotte’s Web”) and an

ant (in “The Ant Bully”).

Next month, she turns up in what has

become a surprisingly unfamiliar role

for an actress who was the biggest fe-

male box office star in Hollywood for a

decade: leading lady.

“Duplicity”is a romantic tale about

two corporate security workers looking

to steal from the corporations and from

each other. Written and directed by Tony

Gilroy, who made “Michael Clayton,” it

pairs Clive Owen with Ms. Roberts in

her first real leading role since 2001. That

year, she capped a long string of roles in

romantic comedies with performances

in “America’s Sweethearts” and “The

Mexican.”

That she is finally back has created a

hopeful flutter among producers and

filmmakers who have been yearning

for some female star power. That’s been

relatively scarce since Ms. Roberts, who

turned 41 in October, began to focus on

raising her family and took a few roles in

ensemble films like “Mona Lisa Smile,”

“Closer,” “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Ocean’s

Twelve.” She had a prominent role in the

2007 film “Charlie Wilson’s War” but

shared the screen with Tom Hanks, Amy

Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

“Nobody has stepped into the vac-

uum,” said one female producer, who

spoke on condition of anonymity to pro-

tect her future hopes of casting the likes

of Reese Witherspoon, Amy Adams and

Scarlett Johansson. None of those ac-

tresses has yet approached the run of hits

Ms. Roberts had in the 1990s with movies

including “Erin Brockovich” (for which

she won an Oscar), “Runaway Bride”

and “Notting Hill.”

Ms. Roberts declined to discuss her

decision to star in “Duplicity,” or her rea-

sons for stepping aside, if not quite back,

at the height of her box office appeal. A

number of people close to Ms. Roberts

said her marriage in 2002 to Danny

Moder, who did camera work on “The

Mexican,” and the demands of raising

their three children had put limits on her

acting career.

Some who have worked closely with

Ms. Roberts said her choices were based

less on strategy than on instinct. She was

persuaded to do “Duplicity,” they said,

roughly two years ago after being urged

to take the role by Mr. Owen, a friend. She

was pregnant at the time, so the movie

waited for the birth of her third child.

Once on board, Mr. Gilroy said, Ms.

Roberts brought her considerable ex-

perience with romantic capers to bear

in shaping the project. “She was our ex-

pert,” he said. “She had been down this

road before, and none of the rest of us

had.”

After smaller roles, Julia Roberts isstarring in a romantic comedy.

A livebroadcast of the

MetropolitanOpera’s

production of‘‘Il Barbiere di

Siviglia’’ in 2007 at a Manhattan

movie theater,right. Below,

Renée Fleming sang in ‘‘Thaïs,’’

as seen in December at a movie theater in Bensalem,

Pennsylvania.

Repubblica NewYork