Neo-liberalism crashes

Back in the US after a year. It's eerie here: as far as one can see everyday life is proceeding normally in its immense inertia, but the cultural and economic atmosphere has been transformed. In December 2007 a different world existed. They can talk about the previous postwar recessions (1984, 1991 etc) as analogies but they had nothing like this psychic force. This time a providential almost vengeful disaster is proceeding.
Among academics there's endless gossip about which universities are sacking people and which ones are simply reducing pay. I'm by no means immune to the reigning mood of fearful incredulity: the childlike feeling of glee that the whole house of rampant finance capital and consumerism is going down has disappeared. Now it's: am I going to go down with it?