My State of the Union

by: Tom Geoghegan

Wed Feb 25, 2009 at 12:02

Two months ago, I entered this race declaring we are in the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Every day more and more people lose their jobs, health care, and homes. We are witnessing not the unraveling of a few years of excess, but the insolvency of many of the economic practices and theories that became conventional wisdom over the past 30 years.

Most important of these, and that which has caused the greatest destruction, is the idea that debt is wealth. Over the last 30 years, American wages stagnated and people grew deeper in debt -- their homes, educations, health care, every aspect of life. And at the national level, the story hasn't been much different. We lost manufacturing and borrowed from across the globe. There were only two winners in all this, Wall Street and the banks.