Credit card companies are pushing plastic again, consumers are shopping till they drop, and Wall Street had a great year. So this development was predictable, as per today's Washington Post:

SUVs lead U.S. auto sales growth despite efforts to improve fuel efficiencyIf U.S. consumers are in the midst of a green revolution, the news hasn't reached car buyers.With the end of the recession, bigger vehicles have made a comeback, sales figures show, and it has come at the expense of smaller, more-efficient cars......"You have about 5 percent of the market that is green and committed to fuel efficiency," said Mike Jackson, the chief executive of AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the country. "But the other 95 percent will give up an extra 5 mpg in fuel economy for a better cup holder."

I like to think that nations have characters much as people do, and there is of course so much talk about how great ours is -- American exceptionalism was one of the defining beliefs of the recent election cycle. But there was also much talk about how the recent economic shock would change us for the better, return us to a virtuous state that we apparently had left behind somewhere.Or not. Or maybe we were always thus.