US spending threatens the dollar’s status. Wake up, America

News Snapshot:

This April marks the centennials of the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. On Long Island, the setting for the novel, much has changed. The fictional West Egg, the putatively less prestigious village just over the border from Queens, today is filled with mansions rivaling Gatsby’s own along Manhasset Bay. On the bay’s other side, in East Egg, where the green light shone at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock, the few remaining legendary Gold Coast estates now are public museums or village facilities. The former old-money families, including the Guggenheims, Harrimans, and Vanderbilts, have been supplanted...