 When the Americans get out of this bind, as they will, who could blame them if they said, to hell with the rest of the world. Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes. When the railways of France, Germany, and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broken.