Brutal Recession Destroyed Americans' Wealth, Net Worth Down 40% In 3 Years (Forbes)

[girl gone mad]

16. Speculation drove these bubbles in commodities.

This is another argument against allowing the financial sector to become so powerful in lieu of sound fiscal policy and strong regulatory structures.

There was an abundance of oil available on the world markets throughout the run up in 2007. There was so much oil, banks had to hire supertankers to store all of the oil they were accumulating in their leveraged bets. After the margin calls hit, prices collapsed because the genuine supply was far in excess of the genuine demand.

While I agree that resource and productive capacity constraints represent the true obstacles to economic growth, if you really believe we are now bumping up against energy constraints and resource constraints, wouldn't the best solution be for the currency-issuing government to spend money developing clean, renewable energy sources, updating our infrastructure, investing in transportation alternatives, growing sustainable local economic movements, etc.?

It seems that what you propose is for tens of millions of people to simply accept unemployment, a poor quality of life and greater levels of economic inequality in the hopes that we can delay addressing environmental and ecological concerns. That amounts to giving governments and financial elites a free pass on their societal obligations. I don't believe that this represents the best option. Economic growth does not have to come at the expense of the environment and it does not have to directly correspond to growth in energy consumption. Refusing to invest in education, energy and infrastructure now while allowing our productive capacity to wither away will lead to costly results down the road.