Two conflicting currents seem to be sweeping through both Main Street and Wall Street. The first is nervous-making, the second soothing. They are, respectively, a sense that things are out of control; and a feeling that the economy is in a sustainable recovery. The feeling that things are spinning out of control is an amalgam of seemingly unrelated events. The stock market drops almost 1,000 points in a matter of minutes and no one can figure out why.

A recently naturalized Pakistani plants a car bomb in Times Square and only his incompetence prevents it from taking hundreds of lives. New York City realizes once again just how big and vulnerable a target it is.