If you’re depressed about the

If you’re depressed about the market, you might cheer yourself up by reading Trollope’s The Way We Live Now. Don’t be put off if you see a book jacket or introductory essay characterizing it as an indictment of “capitalism” (i.e., life). It isn’t; it’s a great book, with a couple of stock promoters who would be right at home today, right up to the tragic denouement. The “New Economy” of the time was a railroad from Salt Lake City to Mexico City which, however, no one actually intended to build. I guess that’s a distinction.