Well, the old girl went pedaling off down the drive at a hell of a speed.

On the eve of the last G 7 meeting in London, US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan did a startling about face by soft pedaling America s trade deficit. Market pressures appear poised to stabilize and over the longer run possibly to decrease the US current account deficit and its attendant financing requirements, he said.

But this is one of those very rare moments when we have to choose whether we're just pedaling furiously to get back to where we were a year or two ago, and a very narrow idea of what the economy is for, or whether this is a moment to jump ahead, to reboot and to do some of the things we probably should have been doing anyway.