Charles W. Calomiris Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia :
No, but it would be a tragedy if people lost sight of what the fall of the Berlin Wall meant for mankind. I remember visiting Berlin in the 1980s. The tension in the free part of the city was palpable; people still worried about a military conflict, and were confronted every day with the brutal fact of the wall dividing their city. The oppression and bleakness of the communist part of Berlin was striking, even more than the effects of communism in Russia. As one walked through "checkpoint Charlie" one's world changed so dramatically, so tangibly, and so much for the worse.