should i ask bob zoellick this, but i didn't get a chance to.for the people in here i'll ask for any comments. should that date symbolizing that the aps along the lines of the berlin wall, 9/11, that have affected our nation in that way. because it looks like a trend that's going to happen for a wild. >> sure, well i think it's important for us -- this goes back to john owens first question. how do we know when were in one these transformative moments? and they think is important if you're an analyst to consistently set yourself benchmarks and say look, if i see this come about in the other thing than i think i'm in one of these moments and start rethinking fundamentalist associations. if you want my own answer to your question i would answer that in a negative that i don't see the financial crisis of such a moment. and the reason is perhaps a pretty old-fashioned way of thinking about things and they may be no victim to the very same scholarly cognitive problems that i just talked about. namely, you know, if we are counting these moments don't

bob zoellick did it again last night in his comments.ev, of course, had been talking about a common european home, kohl started talking about two germanys under a european roof, baker was talking about a transatlantic security architecture, so i kept seeing these met fors again and again, so i decided to follow the lead of the historical actors and use that as the lead for the book. and this is also the way that i addressed the question of how do policymakers respond in the aftermath of these dramatic events. so what i decided to do was think about what happened after november 1989 as an architectural competition where you had different architects proposing different blueprints in a highly competitive fashion to try to succeed, to try to be the one who could put down the blueprint for post-cold war europe the fastest. and the metaphor, i found, worked well because as you know if you win an architectural competition, if you -- your model is selected, that doesn't mean you get to build anything. because people sue you, the contest was unfa