This time is [not] different, but where's that Wile E. Coyote Moment?

[alice wellintown]

In _This Time is Different; Eight Centuries of Financial Folly_
Reinhart & Rogoff cite Paul Krugman's Wile E. Coyote Moment paper,
published in Sept. 2007, in which he claims that the moment when those
holding US dollars, like a pack of Wile E. Coyotes out over a cliff
standing on nothing but thin air who realize that nothing is holding
them and their dollars up, fall and crash to the solid ground where
the physics of things, drawn out in funny diagrams with Greek letters
spell out the truth: this time is NOT different. But the dollar
measured against any dollar index of basket or bucket or currency has
not fallen, has not crashed, has not really budged at all. Take the
WSJ Index, a reasonable index to use, and we see it is exactly where
it was in September 2007.   So where is that Chuck Jones double take
and sphincter tightening, that foaming at the mussel, that bulging of
the eyes resignation, that oh shit, then back to the old Acme drawing
board moment? Where is the devaluation of the greenback? The inflation
default of the largest default virgin, the USA? Where? Is she too big
to fail? Certainly, she is no longer too exceptional to falter, to
fumble, to fuck-up, to fall, but she remains an exceptional economy,
too dodgy for the dismal scientists: a Roadrunner.