As we move further into the fourth year of the global financial crisis, the questions of where it will end are becoming ever more insistent. When will political leaders finally come up with a solution? When will the atmosphere of dread and panic subside? Put most simply, when will life get back to normal?

There have been recessions before. Unemployment has risen, government revenues have dropped, but after a couple of years some combination of economic policy and new consumer demand has turned the tide and Western democracies have reverted to politics as usual, with parties of the left and right arguing over the distribution of social goods within their own countries. Why isn't that happening again?

There are plenty of answers that speak to the immediate causes: the economic stimulus packages on both sides of the Atlantic have been too small to restart substantial growth; the European Union bureaucracy has been dysfunctionally slow to respond; the euro zone lacks a process for countries to give up the currency.

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The script is familiar by now. International finance officials pledge measures to calm the markets. But capital doubts the efficacy of the state and decides to kill off a little more of it, like a boy cutting off his aging father's hand. And what are we preterite souls left to do but open our browsers each morning with that sickly tinge of disaster anticipation we've become habituated to since Sept. 11 and stare at the Dow. The Dow, which the business press and the cable-news tickers have succeeded in grafting onto our brains as a national psychic thermometer, a number too important to ever take our eyes off of (what's good for business is good for you!). A number to be watched even as the president speaks to the nation, so that we can measure to the decimal point the market’s pleasure or displeasure at our elected leader's words.

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