Bob Dylan is timeless. This 1960s song is proving prophetic for a second time. About to be gone with the wind are the material excesses that followed the Sixties and were satirised in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. It was probably seen as entertainment then, but those Masters of the Universe have taken a fall with the Wall Street meltdown.

America is impatient for change and elected Barack Obama president. And “the seismic change in Washington” will have “a profound impact on the world”, says the New Statesman in “Here come the liberals”.

Changes are already under way. After top Goldman Sachs executives decided to forgo their bonuses and take just their base salaries of about $600,000, the bosses at UBS, Barclays and Deutsche Bank also followed suit.

Such sacrifices don’t mean we are headed for an idyllic Age of Aquarius.

Plainspeaking David Brooks in the New York Times prophesies there will be people who will lose their middle class status. In the article headlined “The formerly middle class”, he punctures any rosy notions about hard times. He writes:

At the beginning of every recession, there are people who see the downturn as an occasion for moral revival: Americans will learn to live without material extravagances. They’ll simplify their lives. They’ll rediscover what really matters: home, friends and family.

But recessions are about more than material deprivation. They’re also about fear and diminished expectations.

“Recessions breed pessimism”, he writes, and this will lead to alienation. He concludes:

If you want to know where the next big social movements will come from, I’d say the formerly middle class.

Let’s hope the future isn’t as bleak as he thinks it is. The world has recovered from recessions before. But who has kept count of how many people moved up or down in life or how long it took those who fell to get out of skid row?

The Times They Are A-Changin’ isn’t all sunshine and happiness. There are winners and losers.

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