I have read two books about the dust bowl recently, and as I'm sure we all know that happened during the great depression. The same exact things that happened back in the great depression to cause the economy to collapse, and continue to downward spiral are the same things that are happening now. A long series of bad decisions that happened over a period of 20 years which spans more than one presidency. Spend, spend spend, and credit, credit, credit. The thing that bothers me the most? In both instances, and most notably and obviously, just because it is now in the history books, is how the govt, press, etc tried soooo hard to convince everyone to keep spending, keep buying on credit so that the economy can right itself and all will be right with the world. I believe and maybe mistakenly, that there is such a thing as responsible capitalism, but we didn't practice it at the beginning of the last century and we aren't practicing it now.