Washington Post: The End of American Capitalism?

The vast majority of yesterday's afternoon stock sellers awoke feeling pretty glad they didn't leave all their money in the stock market overnight, since worldwide wealth boiled off into the ether as global markets tanked after the Dow spiraled under 8600.

It seems like only yesterday that Ronald Regan, the patriarch of modern Republican propaganda, was pooh-poohing the Soviet Union's economic and political failure as the gigantic mothership, hammer and sickle waving in the trade winds, sailed into the sunset and off the edge of what we can now admit is a flat Earth after all.

But now America's capitalist yacht -- wouldn't you know it -- is sailing right up the failed Russian ship's still-smoldering stern, listing dramatically and poignantly with the foul-smelling bilge of financial ruin leaking uncontrollably into her belly.

The truth, we're discovering, lies not within one dogma or another, but in the middle ground. And no system, not even democracy, is immune to failure when those who are charged with keeping the public's faith and trust start doing what's best for them rather than what's best for the country. We are all to blame; Republicans... Democrats... no ones' hands are clean in this historic debacle. Perhaps this is why all civilizations of man failed sooner of later; perhaps it is our destiny to destroy ourselves.

Red-faced embarrassment such as this (and worse) is the price we will pay. The rest of the world sees still defiant, still arrogant, still money-squandering American financiers shuddering and crumbling under the weight of nearly inconceivable greed-lust, abuse of absurdly cheap and free-flowing credit, and self-abused management of our personal and global affairs in which we have failed on a scale that is unmatched in recorded history. The show is not free, though; there are many in our illustrious global audience who followed US investors down the path to ruin as well. If the US was hated in the world before, I bet they really love us now!

Once again we have an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, that even as we pointed and laughed at flailing Communism we were sowing the seeds of our own demise. But even as our ship is sinking, even as we sail closer to the yawning abyss that claimed the former Soviet Union, we Americans are too proud of ourselves to notice how miserably we failed.

My generation wanted for nothing. We received every advantage from the Greatest Generation who preceded us. Most of our parents and grandparents had hard lives. They wanted better for us, their children, and this great and honorable intention metamorphosed into the very worst thing they could have done. Hard lives build character, and the gift of ease and leisure turned us into crying babies consumed by an entitlement complex that fooled us into believing we were special and deserving of this unsustainably rich standard of living. I fear we are in for a very hard landing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/09/AR2008100903425.html?wpisrc=newsletter