The CDO was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America. For Wall Street it was a machine that turned lead into gold.

In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.

In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.

When something happens people didn't predict, they find ways to explain it as if it were predictable.

Every form of strength is also a form of weakness,” he once wrote. “Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.

The incentive for the outsider is to attack the system right up to the moment he is co-opted by it. The incentive for the insider -and this took some getting used to- is to allow yourself to be attacked, and then co-opt your most ferocious attackers, and their best ideas. The effect on the system as a whole is to make it more stable, because everyone winds up working on its behalf.

When an American declares bankruptcy, when he hits bottom, he can reinvent himself. There's a story he can tell. We tolerate reinvention. We encourage reinvention. That's what this country has that Europe does not. It's not just a crisis; it's an opportunity.