THIS SOUNDS BULLISH

HUNGER HITS DETROIT'S MIDDLE CLASS

It's not that I want the "recovery" to fail; it's that all this optimism and market-pumping is unreal, and it's an excuse to avoid growing problems. We'll give trillions of dollars to the banks at the same time that we close schools in Detroit and let the city run low on food. What food there is in the grocery stores will be guarded by armed men in combat fatigues.

I'd like to underscore that in the midst of two wars and an economic crisis, America's disaster zones on the fringe (the old industrial heartland, the Motor City, New Orleans) have become suburbs of Iraq.