The European Union's Brussels summit on December 8-9 is its latest, most urgent attempt to calm the bond markets, save the euro, and create firmer mechanisms that promise to ensure long-term fiscal discipline among eurozone nations.

The lesson of the financial crisis is not that we should stop thinking about the future, but that we should give up the faith that wise central bankers and learned economists can make the financial world safe. They can't.

Can our slow-growing and debt-ridden economy "afford" to limit future spending on health care? Health-sector boosters point to the industry's long record of creating more jobs and growing faster than the rest of the economy. But a number of recent warning signs indicate what cannot go on forever will not, and a rebalancing of our future spending patterns might be good economic medicine.

While economic downturns can be frightening and difficult, people living in free market economies enjoy greater health, better access to basic necessities, better education, work less arduous jobs, and have more choices and wider horizons than people at any other point in history.

It is time for Middle Eastern countries to follow Damascus's lead in creating heavy penalties for the fake-pharmaceutical trade.

Since no banker, or regulator, or politician, or fund manager, or rating agency, or accountant, or economist can know the future, the long historical series of financial mistakes called bubbles and busts is bound to continue.

Democrats captured both houses of the legislature and a Senate and House seat in 2004, the governorship in 2006, and a Senate and House seat in 2008.