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Signs and portents

The outlook for America in Obama’s second term
by
February 2013, no. 348

Signs and portents

The outlook for America in Obama’s second term
by
February 2013, no. 348

November in America signals a time to gather in, take stock and breathe a little. The elections are done by the end of the first week. Thanksgiving beckons, the high holidays begin, media fever subsides – a little – and morphs into retrospective political analysis and projected anxiety about the future, especially, since 2008, the economic future.

It is a pattern I’ve seen repeated over and over. But the season also has its kinks. In the Fall of 2012, one came in the guise of a vast, malign ripple in nature. On 30 October, just before Halloween, Hurricane Sandy made landfall south-west of Atlantic City. And everything changed.