Play That Fiddle, Nero, Redux

Rome is burning. Wall Street panics, our retirement savings are gone, the national debt is growing, our home values are falling, and people are losing jobs. And George W. Bush and his cronies...the very people who started this mess...are playing the fiddle. When will people start calling him The New Hoover?

In 7 days many people have seen more than half of their retirement savings disappear. Gone. They've gone from the prospect of a comfortable retirement in their homes to the prospect of living out their golden years in the streets begging for change. This is the collective legacy of 30 years of laissez-faire policies and market fundamentalism gone awry. Speculative bubbles...financial derivatives whose value is based not on actual value, but on market psychology...greater downside risk. It's beginning to look a lot like 1929...now if we could just get stockbrokers to start jumping out windows.