It’s 2009 and I’m ready to declare the 2000s as a decade that sucked.
It started with the 2000 election fiasco. Then 9-11, the rush to war in Iraq, the Enron scandal, the Dean scream, and now the economic crisis.
The U.S. income distribution grew increasingly unfair throughout the decade. The real estate bubble grew to such extreme levels that it brought down the entire world economy.
What really annoys me is that it all was so obvious. The Economist has been writing story after story about the housing bubble since 2003. Dean Baker wrote reports and seminars in 2005 and 2006. But none of this seemed to sink into the political establishment or the media.
Stirling Newbery has been saying this since 2005 when I first started reading him on The Blogging of the President. See 4 Great Solutions.
And Jim Kunstler has been sounding the horn at Clusterfuck Nation for a number of years. See his book The Long Emergency
Dave Pollard has been beating this drum for a long time as well. 2008
Jon Taplin Grand Theory of Our Present Dilemma
Bill Bonner It’s a Depression, Not a Recession
Even Stiglitz got in on this problem back in September.
Yves Smith on an American Banana Republic with supporting evidence from William Buiter
The contagion continues to spread.
Update - I drafted this on February 8, 2009. Today Economist’s View links to Business Week, A Decade as Bad as the Great Depression.
I’m glad to see this realization continue to spread. I just wish we could have acted sooner to stop some of the destruction.