Root Causes of the Economic Crisis

Several more perspectives on the American Economy and what led us to this financial crisis:

U.S. Orgy of Debt by ERIC MARGOLIS
Published on Sunday, September 21, 2008 by the Toronto Sun
"One thing is now clear. When great empires run onto the financial rocks, their power quickly ebbs. France's Sun King, Louis XIV, ended his once glorious rein in near bankruptcy caused by his long, ruinous wars with the British and Dutch. Louis XVI's runaway borrowing to finance the American Revolution helped ignite the French Revolution. The Soviet Union's collapse was caused by spending half its national income on arms, and failure to modernize industry... Over the past decade, the U.S. foreign debt doubled. Japan and China now hold 47% of the U.S. foreign debt and finance Washington's wars..."
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2008/09/21/6829246-sun.html
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/21-4

Exploiting Poverty Caused the Financial Crisis by Sally Kohn
Published on Thursday, September 18, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
"Sure, the CEOs and hedge fund managers were greedy. There's no question that wealth and the pursuit thereof led to the sub-prime fiasco and the decline of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch and more. But what's really at play here is persistent poverty and Wall Street seeking to make a dime off the poor, consequences be damned, while Washington looks the other way...Instead of allowing Wall Street to profit off of poverty, we should fix our economy once and for all, to work better for all of us. We need universal health care, including a government-funded insurance option, to help families get out from under mounting health care debt. We need policies that reign in scam lending, from housing to the credit card industry. We need a nationwide living wage and a massive public jobs program, to address underemployment in our unstable economy while helping build essential shared infrastructure like public transportation and schools..."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/18-0

Naomi Klein outlines 'The Shock Doctrine' with MSNBC's Olbermann
by Nick Langewis and Mike Aivaz
Published: Saturday December 1, 2007
"People 'don't actually want to hand their democracies over to multinational corporations,' says Klein. 'So, you need some kind of a shock. And that shock could be a war. It could be an economic meltdown. It could be a terrorist attack, but something that creates a period of confusion, of dislocation, of regression...And then,' continues Klein, 'politicians come forward, playing a father figure'."
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Namoi_Klein_joins_Keith_Olbermann_to_1130.html

Naomi Klein: Financial crisis part of Bush 'shock doctrine'
by David Edwards and Andrew McLemore
Published: Sunday September 21, 2008
"Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, outlines how crises, real or perceived, have been used by governments, especially the United States under George W. Bush, to strong-arm a disoriented citizenry into accepting changes to its rights, and its government, that it wouldn't otherwise accept."
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Naomi_Klein_Financial_crisis_part_of_0921.html

Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class
by Thom Hartmann
Published on Friday, March 12, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
"If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed 'to protect domestic industries') then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest... Which requires us to puncture the second balloon of popular belief. The 'middle class' is not the natural result of freeing business to do whatever it wants, of 'free and open markets,' or of 'free trade.' The 'middle class' is not a normal result of 'free markets.' Those policies will produce a small but powerful wealthy class, a small 'middle' mercantilist class, and a huge and terrified worker class which have traditionally been called 'serfs.'... The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws. ...If the remnants of that modern middle class are to survive - and grow - we must learn the lessons of the past and return to the policies that in the 1780s and the late 1930s brought this nation back from the brink of economic disaster.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0312-08.htm

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class a book by Thom Hartmann published in 2006 --Click here to buy the book Audio Book
"The American middle class is on its deathbed. Ordinary folks who put in a solid day’s work can no longer afford to buy a house, send their kids to college, or even get sick. If you’re not a CEO, you’re probably screwed... In his latest book, Air America host Thom Hartmann shows how the American middle class that was so carefully constructed by our country’s founding fathers has been systematically dismantled over the past quarter-century, and, under the guise of 'freeing' the market, replaced by a system designed to line the pockets of the super-rich and corporations... Hartmann shows that it’s not too late to return to the America our founders envisioned. Democracy requires a fair playing field. It will survive only if We the People stand up, speak out, and reclaim our democratic birthright.http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=213&Itemid=79 or http://www.amazon.com/Screwed-Undeclared-Against-Middle-Currents/dp/1576754146

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS of Thom's book: "In the last twenty-five years, we've witnessed an undeclared war against the middle class. The so-called conservatives waging this war are only interested in conserving--and steadily increasing--their own wealth and power. Hartmann shows how, under the guise of 'freeing' the market, they've systematically dismantled the programs set up by Republicans and Democrats to protect the middle class and have installed policies that favor the superrich and corporations... But it's not too late to return to the America our Founders envisioned..." http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/305