The bad news is that as markets stabilize, chances for fundamental financial reform may be slipping away. As a result, the next crisis will probably be worse than this one, says Paul Krugman at The New York Times.

Graphic: An Average Consumer's Spending.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values, says Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try, the more we step outside our comfort zone, the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

Sales of scotch whisky are regarded by some as a fair, if unusual, barometer of economic prospects and how confident people feel about the present and the future.