That being said, however, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina it's wise to recall another historical axiom-the only thing permanent is change.

The full impact of Katrina on the national economy will take months, maybe years to fully play out. But already one consequence is clear, that the infrastructure, which sustains the prosperity of the United States and constitutes one of our chief national competitive advantages, is a fragile thing.

Andrew Young, the former U.N. Ambassador and Mayor of Atlanta (as well as a native of New Orleans), framed the situation with his customary eloquence: "I think we've got to see this as a serious problem of the long-term neglect of an environmental system on which our nation depends," he told the New York Times. "All the grain that's grown in Iowa and Illinois, and the huge industrial output of the Midwest has to come down the Mississippi River, and there has to be a port to handle it, to keep a functioning economy in the United States of America."

The stark truth underscored by Katrina is that America needs to start addressing our looming infrastructure problems. The warning signals abound: port bottlenecks, rail systems in need of modernization, highways stretched to capacity. And that's just the physical side of the equation.

The human side is equally in need of attention. The movement of industrial capacity offshore to emerging markets with lower labor and material costs is a shift of historical proportion. In its wake, many of the institutions and practices that characterize the 'old' order-education, healthcare, work rules-are coming unglued.

Instead, our social infrastructure needs to be shored up to cope with the displacement that is on the way.

In this month's Policy Perspective section, authors John Hegel and John Healy Brown (he was director of Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center) pick up on that theme, saying the U.S. desperately needs a public policy to attract and develop talent. Where past economic plans focused on developing natural resources, industry and robust financial markets, they conclude that, "economic policy agendas of the twenty-first century must focus instead much more aggressively on talent development."

What to do? Well, here's a modest proposal for readers of World Trade, those of us who depend on an efficient infrastructure-physical and social-for our livelihood in the ever more competitive global economy. What if we became a voice for action, non-partisan non-ideological advocates calling ourselves something like Friends for the American Infrastructure? Stranger things have happened.

Tell me what you think with an e-mail (shistern@worldtrademag.com) and your suggestions about ways to upgrade the infrastructure for the sake of American competitiveness.

We'll publish your recommendations in a future issue. From there, who knows?