From my hotel room, I look down into the hole that was the World Trade Center. Caterpillars grind their way through the mud, day and night, scratching at the scar that just won't heal.

New Yorkers, somehow always able to step around the ugliness in their city on their way to discover its many beauties, scurry up and down the sidewalk as if the defining disaster of this young century never happened. They duck into the gleaming towers around the hole, trade derivatives and complain about the market.

And I can't help thinking how much has gone down this hole. Thousands of lives all around the world. Billions of dollars. Countless billions of hours of wasted time.

And for what? Do you feel any safer now?

Labels: world trade center