Financial meltdown

Actually, I think we can blame 30+ years of becoming way too comfortable with debt. The lesson out of the Great Depression was "Don't borrow". That lesson was lost by the 1980's. and by 2000 it was out of control.

Both this and the great Depression came on the back of excess credit cycles. These excessive credit cycles result in massive misallocation of resourses, build up far too many obligations that cannot be fulfilled and reward millions of non-producers along the way.

This can only be fixed with a big attitude shift about money and the idea that we can have things today based upon future earnings rather than based upon past earings.

Also you need to make things of value to make an economy that really works. You can't have everyone buying selling stuff. Somebody needs to be making the stuff that gets bought and sold.