Cultural crash

Saddening, really.

The cultural crash should have been a tip-off to the economic crash to come. Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, money managers whose alleged $667 million fraud looted the endowments at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, were fond of collecting Steiff stuffed animals, including an $80,000 teddy bear. Sir Robert Allen Stanford — a Texan who purchased that “Sir” by greasing palms in Antigua — poured some of his alleged $8 billion in ill-gotten gains into a castle, complete with moat, man-made cliff and pub. He later demolished it, no doubt out of boredom.

But how do we recognize cultural crashes?