[Sanin]

The stock market crash of 1929, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression of the United States, came directly from wild speculation which collapsed and brought the whole economy down with it. But, as John Galbraith says in his study of that event (The Great Crash), behind that speculation was the fact that "the economy was fundamentally unsound." He points to very unhealthy corporate and banking structures, an unsound foreign trade, much economic misinformation, and the "bad distribution of income" (the highest 5 percent of the population received about one-third of all personal income).
A socialist critic would go further and say that the capitalist system was by its nature unsound: a system driven by the one overriding motive of corporate profit and therefore unstable, unpredictable, and blind to human needs.

-A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn


Sound familiar? Except now the top .1 percent of the population make 25% of the personal income. We still have that unsound foreign trade, economic misinformation, and unhealthy corporate and banking structures. Even worse now though is the prevalence of credit card debt.