As I see it, the problem is this; the mighty post WWII American 'consumer" economy is no more. But finding its end impossible to contemplate or admit we have created a facade, a financial "house of cards" as the President calls it, to mask its loss and take its place.

That economy was created by and based in the consumer spending of a broad and broadening middle class. Spending supported by a growing job market and productivity-based rising wages.

But, over the last 30-40 years, as a result of automation, globalization, union suppression and the political support, by both parties, of the interests of finance over manufacturing, Wall Street over Main Street, heirs and investors over wage earners, and, the elevation of the consumer interests of a more affluent but more limited meritocratic class over even the most basic survival interests of everyone else, we have transitioned to a different economy -- a borrower economy in which consumer spending is propped up to a greater and greater extent by easier and easier credit and more and more unsustainable levels of personal debt. We have become dependent on financial measures and manipulations -- the acceptance of huge amounts of debt and, most important in this crisis, reliance on ever more questionable credit instruments and practices, to maintain consumer spending while obscuring the real, fundamental problems; productivity growth that no longer leads to rising wages, rising job insecurity, record levels of income disparity (that have replaced a broad, mass market with ever richer but more limited elite markets), and, most important, average per capita wages and even "average" household incomes that can not support even basic middle class survival expectations (homeownership, health care, education, retirement), much less healthy consumer spending. Nor, of course, do they support savings.

It is an economy in which the middle class has dwindled, working class wages have been declining for decades, and even the wages of the educated middle class have stagnated (and, most recently, started to decline). And, of course, as such, it is an economy in which the poor find entry into the middle class (thus expanding the consumer base required for a consumer economy) through good jobs and higher wages increasingly impossible.

But, despite all these long-standing problems, we have managed to stagger along, from crisis to crisis, bubble to bubble, and actually create unprecedented fortunes for those at the top, by finessing our level of financial play and letting the whole world in on the shell game.

For instance, in addition to the transition to two earner households, late 70s and early 80s inflation and wage stagnation was met with easier credit for greater and greater numbers of people. The "smart" strategy consumers were encouraged to pursue was to "buy now" on credit and pay later "with cheaper dollars." Credit cards went from a convenience for the affluent to an ubiquitous necessity for everyone else. (Increasingly, in many places, you couldn't even open a bank account without one.)

By the end of the 80s, despite the fact that most middle class households now had two earners, the average middle class family was routinely using significant amounts of debt to maintain both consumer spending and the basic expectations of middle class life (home ownership, healthcare and education, secure retirement). But, they were paying an increasingly unbearable cost for doing so -- because although inflation (in consumer goods, but not in basics like health care and housing) was now under control, interest rates were still sky high. Businesses loaded with too much high interest debt went under, jobs were lost, bankruptcies spiked, consumer spending contracted. George H. Bush lost his bid for re-election.

In the 90s, falling interest rates allowed for an orgy of home re-financing. Middle class families used that money to pay down their debt, Wall Street boomed, the budget deficit was brought under control, the housing market picked up, and increases in home values and 401 K's made so many people members of the "investor" class that concern about wages and wage earnings became passe. When, in fact, at the end of the decade wages even, for the first time in 30 years, began to rise for those at the bottom began, many saw it as a troublesome development (that could lead to inflation in the cost of doing business) that needed to be supressed.

2000 -- the high tech bubble began to inevitably deflate, the Bush administration made tax breaks for the investor class its only priority. Gains for working people from the 90s were lost and reversed. Jobs contracted. But, although the average guy's 401K may have been hammered, there were HUGE amounts of money in the hands of the real investor class. Where to put it? In investment in America's infrastructure? In development of new technologies, industries and jobs? Naw. Not enough profit in that. What's needed is another bubble. More questionable, easy money, high profit financial instruments. More suckers trying to grasp at the American dream in the only ways open to them.

We are a democracy and "We the People" ran up bad creadit card debt and having the government create money to push the pig forward for our children to pay off isn't the answer.

We are going to have a recession.  It's coming.   The question really is do you want to delay it through this action and have you current and unborn children pay off the debt or do you want to have us around right now deal with the consequences.

We act like this action is going to fix this.