I am curious, what is the solution. I mean for you to say that this isn't would imply that you know what is. So what is it? cut taxes? Eliminate medicare? I mean what does government have in its power to do aside from spending money that would compel a private business to hire more people? The answer is ZERO. You can't deregulate your way into growth and not have massive corporate corruption as a result. Businesses are not there to hand money out. They are there to make money and will do so however they see fit. That is why people engaged in such awful lending practices over the last 20 years. The people calling the shots didn't care about 1 year down the road for their own company much less the health of the economy in 5 or 20 years. It's all about profit. That is all the corporate mindset demands. So should we be surprised the bottom fell out of the market? No because there is a sucker born every minute and there are people who make fortunes off of that fact. If government was as constrained as I believe you to be implying then we would have a financial collapse pretty close to yearly as bubbles would constantly form and fall apart. There would be that most hated wealth transfer but it wouldn't go from rich to poor it would go from someone offering an incredible growth investment to the idiots dumb enough to fall for it. The reason why government exists isn't that evil socialists are trying to take your money and hate the fact you have freedoms. Government exists because people as individuals are weak. As soon as a bully comes your either going to be poorer, hurt or just outright dead. In this case if someone needs to gets the ball rolling again I would rather it be a government which in theory has some accountability rather then some thug like Madoff offering the investment lifetime of an opportunity where I can take my labor and give it to him so he can give his wife a condo in Palm Springs.