Tony Blankley  And so the morning went. It was a mix of false
confidence, bafflement and fear in the faces of grizzled stock
market pit operators, pension fund managers, Ivy League finance
professors, hedge fund operatives, elegant European financiers,
worldly Muslim bankers, hard-faced New York asset managers,
richly dressed private-equity fund owners, shrewd Asian bankers,
and an occasional foolish-looking politician shaking his fist
futilely at the disgraced former Lehman Brothers CEO.  This
pitiable parade of recently powerful personages got me thinking
of what it would have been like if there had been a cable
medical television network in 1348 to report on the emerging
plague that came to be known to history as the Black Death.
Early reports in December 1347 would have announced unusual
deaths near the docks of Genoa. This would have been attributed
(and was at the time) to a recent rain of frogs, serpents,
lizards, scorpions and other venomous animals in the lands
between Persia and China.  As the plagu