(FORTUNE Magazine) – Folks who had casually assumed that America's year-old immigration law was going to solve all their problems received a bit of a shock when they picked up the November 6 Wall Street Journal. Atop the page-one leader, a headline proclaimed dispiriting news: The statute was NO PANACEA. Meaning that it would not prove ''a remedy for all ills or difficulties'' (Webster's New Collegiate), so no matter what it says in the law, there will continue to be loud talking in restaurants and excess flab in the midriff. Unfortunately for the masses, nonpanacean events have been widespread if not pandemic in 1987. On November 9, with eight weeks still to go in the year, a Nexis search was already showing 321 news stories about developments that had proved not to be panaceas. The developments included the congressional plan + for dealing with the U.S. budget, extra funds for prenatal clinics in California, revenue enhancements associated with Virginia's new state lottery, employee ownership of corporations, desktop publishing, Stinger missiles for the Chadian forces fighting Libya, laser brain surgery, and the withdrawal of a written test stated to have an adverse impact on minority candidates for promotion to the upper reaches of the Dayton, Ohio, police force. Evidencing a profoundly cautious disposition, the police spokesperson speculated that withdrawal of this test might ''not be a panacea.'' Sad to state, a comparable conclusion was reached by Los Angeles therapist Bruce Fredenburg, who was addressing the issue of people going around talking to themselves. Here in the Big Apple, we have quite a few folks out there on the street engaged in this very activity, and on a bad day your correspondent will often find himself joining in. The good news is that Fredenburg says these interior monologues can be quite therapeutic for agitated people. The bad news is that the babble is -- no, we can't say it.