A belated Vegacura Day to ya!

As many of the Vega's Dear Readers know, March 16 is the traditional date on which Vegacura Day is celebrated all across the world.

The date was chosen in part for the auspicious events that seem to have -- almost magically -- chosen to occur on March 16. For instance...

The Generall Court of Election began and held at Portsmouth, Rhode Island on the 16th of March, 1641.

James Madison was born in 1751.

Congress approved legislation establishing West Point on this date in 1802.

Nothing much happened in the aptly named "Boring 19th Century," but in 1926 the first liquid fuled rocked was successfully fired.

The first celebration of Vegacura Day outside the United States occurred in a small Vietnamese village known as My Lai 4 in 1968.

And of course, Ollie North and John Poindexter were indicted for their role in the IranContra "kerfuffle" in 1988.

Oh, and I forgot, that classic in scientific comedy of manners, "Effect of RNA from Normal Human Marrow on Leukaemic Marrow In-Vivo", was published in the journal Nature on March 16, 1963.

Important events, I'm sure you agree, on the same coincidental day of what is often an otherwise pretty bleak month.

But now, via James Wolcott, we learn from the chief economist of MorganStanley that this past March 16, in the year of our Lord 2005, may have been the biggest, most important Vegacura Day yet!

Tipping points are a great concept, but virtually impossible to identify ahead of time -- let alone when they are occurring. It is only with the great luxury of hindsight that we can look back and know that the proverbial bell has rung. In my view, March 16, 2005 could end up in the running as a possible tipping point for America. Suddenly, the US has taken on a very different aura in an increasingly unbalanced world: The confluence of a record current account deficit, a disaster from General Motors, and yet another new high for oil prices all speak of an increasingly precarious role for the global hegemon. World financial markets have barely begun to sniff that out.

[...]

In the end, of course, there’s far more to this story than economics. As I noted recently, history is replete with examples of leadership tests that pit a nation’s military prowess against its economic base (see my 28 February dispatch, “The Pendulum of Global Leadership”). Yale historian Paul Kennedy has long argued that great powers typically fail when military reach outstrips a nation’s economic strength. In that vein, there’s little doubt that America is extending its reach in this post-9/11 world. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were the opening salvos. The Bush Administration’s recent nomination of two leading neocons to key global positions -- John Bolton as America’s ambassador to the UN and Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank (also announced on March 16) -- are more recent examples of a White House that is upping the ante on its “transformational” projection of global power. In Paul Kennedy’s historical framework, America is extending its reach at precisely the moment when its economic power base is weakening -- a classic warning sign of the fall of a Great Power.

So, my friends, in years to come when you and and your family come together to celebrate Vegacura Day, and as tradition dictates, the youngest asks, "Why is this day different from all other days?" Now you can reply, "Because this is the day on which the cracks in the foundation of the Empire that was America began to creak and groan."