During my stay the stock market nearly daily was falling wildly and only as it became clear that the war was starting did the market spike up higher, for eight consecutive trading days. The recurring theme of polite discussion was the possibility of a terror attack. For several days panic ensued and folowed by a rush to buy plastic sheeting and duct tape. A new word had crept into the American lexicon. Discussions of an imminent war, and the subsequent terror attacks against Americans, and what the world would look like in their aftermath, were heard everywhere.
A young Israeli engineer, a founder and CEO of a promising high-tech company, based near Haifa, was on a business visit to New York. The American investment banker prior to hearing the company's presentation perfunctorily asked whether everything was alright back home. He was referring to the suicide terror attack in Haifa the previous day. 15 school children and students including an American student perished, more have succumbed since. "My wife is attending two funerals today," responded the Israeli.The sick smell of death caused by terror, for a moment, filled the opulent conference room.
As a former New Yorker, my visits to that city inevitably conjure up comparisons of the changes that have transpired since my previous visit. My American friends had put me on notice that it was a vastly different New York I would encounter. And so it was.
The wild spendthrift era of the late 1990s and early 2000 was replaced by a much more modest New Yorker whose savings were decimated in the aftermath of the dot.com bubble. "Talk Shows", for example, tended to center on the bargain vacation deals and not on the most recent Broadway hit.