So, essentially, what we've done over the past 30 years of deregulating banking and finance is create incentives for speculating and arbitrage, while creating disincentives for actual investment of capital in the real economy. We have shifted from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism. Rather than building a new economy of alternative energies and green technologies, Wall Street, U.S. elites, and the oilarchies have dug in to defend what they have. They have dug in to defend the past.

Fourth, the real economy of the U.S. already is, and has been, in a depression for the past three decades - manufacturing is about half what it used to be in the 1960s. Some industries have disappeared entirely, such as textiles, clothing, footwear, shipbuilding, printing equipment, power generating equipment, and foundries. Even U.S. employment in computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing is has fallen 17.8% in the past two decades, from 367,000 in 1990 to 199,000 in 2006. For the real economy, the old blues song applies: been down so damn long it looks like up to me.