This market creeps me out, really. It’s one thing for stocks to climb a wall of worry, but quite another for them to dance a jig every time the major averages advance a foot or two on some fresh shard of appalling news from Iraq or New Orleans. Bad news is good news these days, in case you hadn’t noticed, and as far as Wall Street is concerned, the disaster in New Orleans is shaping up to be the best economic news America has had since Germany’s surrender in 1945. Who knows what a square foot of real estate in the French Quarter is worth now that the President has sanctioned a $200 billion reconstruction project? That kind of money could sate every grafter from Louisiana to the North Dakota, with enough left over to build a four-lane tunnel from Scranton to Biloxi.

In his speech to the nation Thursday night, President Bush thoughtfully acknowledged skeptics who have deigned to ask how we’ll pay for it all. Not with new taxes, of course, since that might ruin the taste of beignets and jambalaya for tourists. After all, how much fun would Cajun food be if you knew that it required a $350 subsidy to bring your entrée to table? No, to finance the biggest construction project in the history of the world, America will simply have to tighten its belt a few notches, admonished Mr. Bush. And if that means it will cost Yosemite campers a few more bucks to pitch a tent, or that the next barrel of pork that rolls through Congress will lack provisions for a new scrimshaw museum in Anchorage, then so be it. Sacrifice demands something from each of us in this time of crisis, and so what if a few brazen entrepreneurs reap a bonanza, or Wall Street does a little premature celebrating? It’s a small price to pay if all of the hubris lends further buoyancy to a stock market so obviously hell-bent on seeing the bright side of things.