The crash of 2007-2008 on the lives of Middle America has forever changed the economic landscape. Their sense of financial wealth was based on the size of their 401(k) s and their home equity that seemed to rise almost daily. After the collapse of the stock market and home prices, their confidence has been shattered. Retired seniors also watched in dismay as their rainy day 401(s) started to disappear. Almost one in four homeowners has negative equity. American households have lost $13 trillion in wealth. And it couldn’t have happened at the worst time as 70 million baby boomers began heading into retirement. The last decade has be a splurge for many Americans living beyond their means piling on debt with their credit cards and tapping equity on the rising values on their homes using a double barreled approach to spend. The once strong middle class is experiencing a mega economic quake never before seen as in past recessions.

If we are at the beginning of a recovery, it’s going to be a slow lingering one it could be as long as a decade until most American families return to the standard of living they enjoyed before the crash if ever at all. This recession has seen an accelerated pace of American Companies closing never to open again along with the continued departure of jobs over seas. The more likely reason the economy could tank again is because of insufficient demand. With confidence shattered what will spur growth this time? With many people still out of work along with so many under employed just trying to keep their head above water, where's demand going to come from? Americans still holding on to their jobs out of fear are starting to save further driving down demand.

The usual way of dealing with a recession is to lower interest rates in order to stimulate growth. But the Federal Reserve can't lower the rate to below zero, they’re tapped out. The 80’s recession was different. In order to stop double digit inflation, interest rates rose to stem demand. With historic low interest rates and no body buying, we’re beyond the means of creating demand using this policy.

The calls we hear now too to cut off deficit spending could also be disastrous as crazy as it sounds. Because this economy remains critical, if monetary policy is tightened, this economy could promptly plunge into the depths. One has to wonder about the stock market that has sent the Dow up almost 70 percent since its low in this recession. As the economy continues to stagger, will this bubble burst adding more discomfort to a potential recovery?

Back in March, Obama described modern Wall Street a "Ponzi scheme" in which “few do well while the middle class loses ground. Middle Class America bails out Wall Street who created this colossal collapse and then gets financially refueled to continue their scheme. The current rules and regulations allowed the recklessness of a few to threaten the entire economy. It is not sustainable to have an economy where in one year, 40 percent of our corporate profits came from a junk financial sector with inflated home prices, maxed-out credit cards, over-leveraged banks and overvalued assets..

The big banks, with their enormous political clout are now more powerful than ever. They are now making huge profits and paying huge bonuses based on assurance (you guessed it) that the government (or wait us again) will pay their debts if they face bankruptcy yet again. Unless we begin regulate this enormous scheme, we are setting ourselves up for an incredible catastrophe. Yet extremists collar up to these interests using their buzz words to blame an illusion that government is too intrusive and heading for socialism when the truth is that the country is in the depths of corporatism stealing middle class wealth with bail outs while business as usual persists. Taxpayer money is being drained for profits while the economic foundation continues to disappear. Brokers swarm to China in search of cheap products to dump or get up and leave America to open business over seas to dump more. Even some American companies with familiar names have left to avoid corporate taxes. If you don’taddress the most critical issue of our economic lifetime of rebuilding an economic base of domestic jobs, we’re doomed.

The tragedy of this all is the inability of either party to address the erosion of our long term survival. Either we bring regulation into the banking industry or a second financial crisis is a definite possibility. In addition, we need to address the trade policy to better make our products more competitive. Free trade has been a disaster. In addition we need the best and the brightest to step forward to address how we can rebuild our economic sector to create jobs through tax incentives, tax cuts, seed money and better available credit for small business. Corporation are soulless entities that are only interested in their bottom line, we have to accept that and reverse the trend that the only way to do business now is to flee over seas. Americans have to realize that both Republicans and Democrats live off these entities to our demise. Either we demand an economic future from them or we watch in dismay as our country continues to spiral into economic oblivion. Neither the typicaltax cut Republican (more debt) nor is government spending Democrat (more debt) going to pull us out of this mess, only we can. And that’s the frightening part; we probably won’t and don’t care in this age of divisiveness. The illusion of this two party system persist, the foolery of divide and conquers continues to rule.