US Economic Woes

There is a good article by Daniel Gross that looks at the current economic mess in the US and proposes "fixes". These recommendations doesn't interest me because most "fixes" are cosmetic and soon those "in the know" come up with workarounds to get back to "business as usual". What I do enjoy is the summary he provides of "the problem", i.e. who really gets hurt and who got away with the crime:

During the orgy of debt creation, leverage, and speculation of this past decade, the benefits went overwhelmingly to a few: hedge-fund and private-equity managers and high-level financial services employees, all of whom received massive bonuses based on short-term performance. Since the housing bubble burst, however, the populace at large is largely shouldering the cost—and not just in the form of bailouts for the mortgage industry and investment banks and eroding home values. The Federal Reserve has sought to help the financial sector recover from its self-inflicted wounds by cutting interest rates sharply. And since these reductions have come at a time of high inflation and haven't translated into lower consumer borrowing costs, they're making us all poorer. We receive less interest on our savings, pay more for imports, and generally find our dollar-based assets being debased.