That was then. This is now.

Amidst the pending change in government and the economic crisis that did so much to bring it about, it's fascinating to revisit Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address, which signaled the beginning of an epoch that has now come to a crashing end. This was the speech, a quite eloquent one, in which Reagan famously proclaimed, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem", and legions of the faithful marched to work in Washington (although curiously rarely on Wall Street) wearing the now nearly forgotten yellow ties with Adam Smith's profile.