Political pundits across America seem committed to the notion that our just-concluded decade deserves the moniker "worst ever," with the formulations ranging from Time's demonic "
decade from hell" to Paul Krugman's self-flagellating "
Big Zero." But if Krugman could call it "a decade in which nothing good happened," much of the planet might find our myopic bitterness a bit much -- as if the entire world should stop spinning just because the Dow Jones Industrial Average forgot to exit the decade higher than when it entered.
Why are we so convinced that the last 10 years, the decade of the Naughts, have lived up to their name by coming to naught? ...