[M203M4]

I really hate to be a pessimist, but we are screwed. Not because of this present market kerfuffle, but because of the government intervention strategies being openly advocated by the mainstream of both major political parties, the media, and even some economists (or rather, talking heads who play economist on TV - so I twice count the media). It keeps getting worse, with ever more pervasive interventionism marching into place over the last century - not ever really fixing anything, just simply patching over the damage wrought by their own doing from the time before, each time introducing new structural weaknesses in return for short-term mending of the facade.

Democracy, in particular the desire of politicians to postpone painful but necessary market corrections until their tenure is over, is destroying capitalism. Because of the resistance to the notion that the existence of both winners and losers is necessary and moral (and the associated ravaging wrought by losers at the ballot box upon incumbents and carriers of their legacy), our political masters will ensure that we are all losers.

[montag813]

I really hate to be a pessimist, but we are screwed.

I hope you are wrong. Whenever nations have been faced with such crises, governments have responded with Socialism, and more Socialism. Germany got Hitler. We got the "New Deal" and a longer Depression than should have ever occurred, ending only because of a World War. And America was well on its way to a Socialist state-in-training. If we get another financial panic plus Obama or Hillary, we will fall for good into a dead-red European-style Socialist state.