Americans have never felt at ease with empire, and with good reason. Running an empire often demands that we betray our republican ideals, at least for periods of time. It can also be costly in gold and in blood. So it was no surprise that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the American people leapt at the opportunity to lay down the imperial burdens we had carried since World War II. Politicians in both parties assured us that we could off-load our responsibilities onto a “global” market mechanism, overseen by a new institution created in 1995 called the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In the first days after towering tsunamis smashed Japan’s north coast last March, many economists believed that the disaster would have little effect on growth around the world. The region is much less industrialized than southern Japan, so the thinking went, hence the disruptions would likely be smaller than those caused by the massive Kobe earthquake of 1995. Such hopes did not last.

In 1890, Congress passed America’s first federal antimonopoly law, the Sherman Antitrust Act, by an overwhelming margin. The intent was to protect the nation’s markets and break up its concentrations of economic and political power. But almost immediately, the very plutocrats targeted by the law figured out how to turn it to their advantage. It was the unions of the workingman, they said, and the cooperatives of the farmer, that were the truly dangerous cartels. And with some help from business-friendly courts, the big man was made free to use the Sherman Act against the little man.

Fear, in any real market, is a natural emotion. There is the fear of not making a sale, not landing a job, not winning a client. Such fear is healthy, even constructive. It prods us to polish our wares, to refine our skills, and to conjure up—every so often—a wonder.