The Bush Crash & US Household Wealth

The following graph from the Calculated Risk blog makes it very clear that Bush and his wild-eyed right wing economics policy destroyed a generation's wealth in the US. The run-up at the end of the Clinton administration was a symptom of the Reagan "deregulate, deregulate, deregulate" mantra applied by Allen Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve who let the dot.com bubble grow until it exploded. But the housing bubble that exploded at the end of the Bush presidency was far worse because it will last longer and effect the wealth of far more Americans because unemployment caused by it is spread far wider:

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As the post on Calculated Risk makes clear: the loss caused by this Great Recession is $12.3 trillion! All that wealth is gone up in smoke to never return. It will have to be rebuilt by hard work and careful saving over the next generation or so. All thanks to the daffy economic theories of the right and implemented under the George Bush regime.

Oh... and I also blame the right wing economists who pushed the idea that "markets are always right" and that the only social activity of any value is the money economy, that housework, volunteer work, community effort. and the love of parents for their children and all the work put into raising them are all "worthless" activities because they aren't measured in dollars. Could there ever have been a more malignant economic philosophy? It is like a vampire or a zombie. It needs a stake through its heart... but that still hasn't happened. There are still many influential -- and very rich -- people who cling to this wierd fetish of the market and the power of "unfettered, unregulated markets" despite the catastrophe of the Great Recession. What will it take to get these people to unwrap their cold dead hands from an even colder, deader ideology that has destroyed a generation?