One of these days I need to frame line that and put it on my desk where I can look at it every day. Immortal line.

Just so my eyes can stop rolling, I would like a break from the following.
"Buy when everyone is afraid..."
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled..."

Wait, how can this be? I thought we bottomed in November '08. It's almost as if my teevee lied to me. I'll be damned.

"Despite their best attempts, central bankers -- whom many blamed for the problem in the first place -- couldn't contain the raging inferno of bad debt, fear of bad debt, and fear of fear of bad debt."

and

"Blame will be ubiquitous: Each group will decry the other as responsible for the country's continuing plight."

Some do carry more blame. Not that this article does so, but I don't like it when people act as if the debt of a struggling working family is the same as that of hyper-leveraged tycoons. It's true, over consumption and excessive debt became an American way of life. We are coming off two decades of phenomenal greed, plenty to of blame to spread around. But not all choices should be viewed as equivalent. What about the impoverishment and inequity before the unraveling began? Whose choices brought this on?

"Americans are resilient folks: We thrive on adversity, band together during trying times and will, as we always have, persevere."

The history of nations suggests there are limits to the avarice and perfidy a people will accept from their elites. How deep is American exceptionalism? Perhaps we'll find out.

I can't help it - I'm getting angrier and madder by the day.

To a significant extent, “we” all did this together. (Who do I mean by “we”? The wealthiest 20%, maybe? You had to be pretty high up the income spectrum to feel any sense of economic security.) Not all responsibility and culpability are equal, of course. The point is who emerges as targets for retribution. I fear right wing populism, but the left probably scares those in power more, or the prospect of spontaneous, unfocused social unrest.

How do we will ourselves to be blind to other people's suffering? Did we just want to believe in trickle down so badly? Is it just too hard to swim against the tide? Was competition, and the prospect of personal failure, so great that we just had to compete and try to “stay ahead of the pack”? Is the blinding power of ideology so strong? Are people as greedy and selfish as they seem?

If I'm so angry, it makes me wonder about what must be the growing outrage among people really struggling, unemployed, dispossessed. And I just mean domestically. What about overseas?

The tinderbox and its combustibility are what matters.

I don't know. I get that we can't know. But the only reason that we think it can't happen here (anymore) is because we're American – and because it's been over thirty years since domestic social unrest really seemed threatening. People elsewhere don't think they're immune from political instability….

Maybe I'm too fatalistic, but it sure feels like realism. A part of me feels like it is time for a new turn, like greed had to run its course, and now there may be an opportunity for something different and, in some sense, better. The worry remains what we might have to go through to get to a better place. The state of ecological degradation in conjunction with economic crisis gives me serious pause. What will sustainability mean? Couldn't we have taken steps to confront global inequality, improve social welfare, and respond to the declining health of the planet before, when the world economic system was chugging along? Couldn't the wealthiest 5% have been just half as greedy?

Yes. And that is both tragic and infuriating.

Sorry, Todd. I like this piece and I do appreciate what's on offer here at Minyanville. I don't intend to be part of the problem. I do wonder what is percolating beneath the surface elsewhere if I'm this pissed off in my secure (for the moment) doctoral program?

I'll hope for the best, but that isn't the same as optimism.

Well, on the bright side, there's nothing better for reducing carbon emissions than a global depression.

Agreed.

The frightening part is why various groups are angry.

The entitlement crowd is angry because they have been raised to expect something for nothing; and want more. Almost anything is preceived as an injustice. They're getting a good deal and think they're being taken advantage of. The politicians are desperate to keep them happy at all costs.

The have's are angry because things are more difficult than they were; the peasantry won't keep quiet, and reality keeps invading the mimosa of perception.

The middle class is furious. Taxed to death to care for the entitlement crowd, charged out the nose for health care and other basic needs to prop up the piggies, and what little they have managed to save or invest for retirement squandered at the craps table of the Wall Street Casino. Punished for being responsible, disdained for being average or not a member of one of the "special" groups, and forgotten beyond politicians paying them homage while bending them over.

It's this last group that carries the water and bread and medicine, but they also pack the dynamite and guns. When that pack mule bucks and bolts the rest of the caravan will be in big trouble.

So far, Americans have not been angry enough to even vote the criminals out of office. They continue to bank at Citi and JPM( If you ask a chase customer service Rep about Chase's bailout money, they will state that "JPM did not receive any bailout funds".) As the fallout from the criminal acts of the finance industry hits their childrens education and health care, that anger will increase.
One useful act would be to recognize that the impact of the crimes committed by the Ratings agencies, banks and brokerages and regulators rises to the level of Treason. The money earned fraudulently over the past ten years must be returned and those found guilty must be hung. Companies who repeatedly commit crimes, like Citi and JPM (bond bid rigging this weeks edition) must be put out of business, and certainly not bailed out every 10 years or so by taxpayers.
This in no way should interfere with the efforts of good people to work our way through this and hopefully not leave our grandchildren a wasteland.
The time when the Elites will feel a chill of fear down their backs will be when American Citizens begin to feel an obligation to our Founding Fathers to reclaim the Founding Principles and exhibit a willingness to die for that cause. I personally refuse to fear a Government which clearly has lost its moorings. The boomers may yet have a chance to be "The Greatest Generation"

Have you read Strauss and Howe's 1991 book GENERATIONS? They predicted that the generational constellation would align for crisis era catalyst in the second half of the 2000s decade. Boomers about to move into the elder age bracket, 13ers (pre-Gen X, which came out the same year) moving into middle age, and Millennials into young adulthood. Some of their assertions are pretty hokey, but it stuck with me and influences how I read all this. Actually, their take on cyclical social mood made the last decade plus of deferred comeuppance somewhat comprehensible to me. But gobbling up future generations as we have has me wondering about our ability to pull together like Strauss and Howe hoped. I guess it might just take a clear enemy we can unite against...

If by greatest generation you mean the GI WWII/Depression heroic generation, then no, Boomers don't fit that bill at all. I'm having trouble seeing Boomers in the determined, quasi-visionary role of an FDR at the moment, too. But who knows what kind of resolve will emerge five years from now...

Bravo. Agreed.

My banking and mortgage were at WaMu. I took my cash out the morning before the shareholders were robbed by the FED and J.P. Morgan Chase.

I signed Friday to move my mortgage to a smaller community bank, and will be closing my checking and savings accounts $35 and $10 respectively since Sept.) this week.

I can't be the only one. They are not out of the woods yet; though the government will bail them out with our progenies future anyway because they are in bed together.

The hegemony of the Government/Corporate complex under the guise of democracy is much more dangerous than the Nationalist Socialism of the Nazis or the faux-communalism of the Communist who both, at least, admit that their citizens don't have any individual rights.

I can recognize a chain-letter when I see one.

It is difficult for most people to see that a Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) is just a very exotic use of financial jargon to institute what was known when I was in high school as a chain-letter.
Just look at the essential extracts of the terminology to get the point.
“A CDO investor takes a position in an entity that has defined risk and reward, not directly in the underlying assets.”* In simple terms a buyer of a CDO buys a position in a chain-letter that has no underlying assets.
“An investment in a CDO is an investment in the cash flows of the assets, and the promises and mathematical models of this intermediary, rather than a direct investment in the underlying collateral.”* In ordinary language this means that the return on the money to get a position in the chain will come from the money paid by future down-line buyers of the chain-letter and not from any financial return of the underlying assets referred to in the CDO. The underlying assets are merely there to give the perception that there is a relationship of return on assets that doesn't actually exist. The operators of the chain will promise to pay a return calculated relative to that of the underlying assets but this is conditional to the continuation of income from the down-line growth. In order to continue providing the returns to up-line investors (positions in the chain) continued growth is required, and as with all pyramid systems of economics the collapse is inevitable. It's astounding to my mind that supposed trustworthy and knowledgeable experts of global institutions can be involved in such unethical activities that have been known for decades as unacceptable and illegal practices.
(* quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation)

I must admit that I still have Chase and Citi credit cards. One of the reasons I shorted them was because of their overly generous offers of credit to me in 2007. I used their 0% free money to buy puts on their shares- very satisfying. I will soon cut up their credit cards and mail them back with a letter explaining why I no longer wish to do business with them.

I am familiar with their thesis. I think you are right- the Gen Y'ers
may have to carry the ball - the boomers are too old to bend, much less revolt.

in other words, sort of like a future contracts market?

I prefer investments that provide an opportunity for human effort to provide profitable benefits that people are willing to buy, returning a fair share of the profit to the investors; not some illusion that comes from words and ends in words with no evident generation of good. The argument for what that may be is likely to go on and on, but I use the best judgment of facts I can to choose the most trustworthy enterprises I can find.

Absolutely agree. From the times I studied futures markets at the U (already... Yo! twenty years!!) I have never understood what on Earth was the difference between those and casinos. People in the industry would always claim risk coverage but, what huge risk can they be covering at 500 trillion accumulated value? Maybe we shouldn't care about recession after all... We are covered.

Are we, now?