I heard an Episcopal priest in Dallas say that the clothes and cars and gadgets we buy for ourselves are addictive, and they don't make us happy. He was partly right, and partly wrong. Acquisitions do make us happy. That's why they're addictive. We get hooked on pleasure, not pain.

As we career down the road to the unknown land of the next economy, it would be wise to ask ourselves what kind of capitalism we want to pursue. It will be some kind of capitalism, I feel certain. Even the most despairing in the nation do not seem ready to turn to communism, as some did in the 1930s in the wake of the great capitalistic crash. Nor will it be socialism as it was in Britain after World War II, despite the ascent of Washington to the commanding heights of our financial, and soon, industrial, system. In time the government will follow the lead of Sweden from earlier in the decade and sell its shares in American banks, and probably the automakers as well, to private investors.

If ever there was a year of the woman in American politics, it is 2008. This was the year that Hillary Clinton arrived as a full-blown serious contender for president, front-running, inevitable even, until she bumped into an unexpectedly magical candidate she couldn't overcome. This was the year, also, that Sarah Palin rode in from the West to astonish the nation and rev up the race, pushing her running mate, John McCain, into a dead heat with Barak Obama, at least for a while.

Money is educational. It teaches more than the things it buys. That is a paraphrase from Howard's End by E.M. Forster. And what does money have to teach? Or, to get closer to Forster, what exactly does money impart? To E.M. Forster, money, above all, endows its possessor with the opportunity to hold independent opinions. Virginia Woolf echoed this idea when she said that for a woman to write, she must have a little money and a room of her own.

As we grope our way through yet another economic crisis, it's important to ponder the lessons of this catastrophe because it didn't have to happen. The price of oil is beyond our control, but the housing and credit calamity was made in America by Americans, mainly on Wall Street, who got carried away with their own financial acumen. Then everything "turned to ashes in their hands," to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald. Those lessons lie in the language of finance. Especially revealing are three little words.