THE IDEAS EXCHANGE: ECONOMIC VIEW - America Still Has the Drive to Build More Success Stories ; Last Week's Catastrophe Could Spur the Dynamic Country into More Technological Innovations

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Everything has changed. All those precise calculations about the direction of world economic demand, the worries over the euro or the Japanese banking system; they all seem so utterly unimportant now. The world economy will be profoundly affected by this blow to its largest component, but in ways we can largely only guess.

We can be almost certain there will be damage in the short term, with an increased risk of a global recession. We can be sure too that some sectors of the world economy will be particularly depressed, and a few will experience increased importance. But beyond that, what?

The greatest question of all, surely, is whether this ends the period of …