Monday, March 9th 2009, 1:16 AM  There was Derek Davis, 50, out of Crown Heights originally and Erasmus Hall High, sweeping the sidewalk near Central Presbyterian Church at the corner of 64th and Park, an hour into a shift that would take him to 6 o'clock. Davis stopped now and pointed down 64th with his broom, showing you where the most famous bum in the whole city, Bernie Madoff, still lives.  "Big Bernie," Davis said. "The man in the glass tower."  There were no television trucks on this street on Sunday morning, at least not yet, Davis saying they generally showed up later, "starting up the show all over again."  Then Davis was talking about how Madoff would have to come out of 133 E. 64th later this week, for an appearance in Manhattan Federal Court. There he will have to face some of his victims, some of those who want him to get the kind of forever sentences Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, the Mafia Cops, finally got the other day.  "Whatever he gets won't be enough," Derek Davis said. "Just by getting to stay up there in his glass tower this long he got more of a break from the law than people who did a lot less than he did."  Davis leaned against the outside wall of his old Park Ave. church, tilted his head back as far as it would go, eyes on the top floor of Madoff's building, like it was something else he wanted to sweep away with his broom.  "You look at this man still living the way he is, and you want to say, 'What's wrong with this picture?'" Davis said. "But then you think a better question might be, 'What's wrong with this country?' After you say that, all you can do is hope that the greed that brought us to where we are might somehow turn out to be a good thing, just because it might turn out to be a wakeup call for everybody."  It sounded like some kind of prayer outside Central Presbyterian on a Sunday morning, a prayer that maybe America can come out of this better than it was before, not because of some magic bullet that President Obama can produce, or the Congress, but because it has always been in times like this that the greatness of the country has revealed itself.  Maybe on the other side of this the idea of easy money will no longer seem like a sacrament, as if easy money is the real American Dream.  The people who had their savings and dreams and futures stolen by Madoff didn't break any laws. They never thought Madoff was breaking any. They just went with Bernie because they thought he could make them more. This was hedge fund America, after all, where the smart guys really could make money grow on trees, where the national anthem had become, "I've got mine."
We will find our way because we always have in times like these. We will produce a great generation now because we have to. The books and the catchy name can come later.