I just read a few books (3rd world america) about the 2nd real estate fall coming generated not by sub prime but by people who have lost parts of their income were responsible but are unable to rebuild savings in current market. I think about the general erosion in industry in the US and the loss of a working class. I think about the rising cost of education and how we perpetuate the system that getting a college degree is needed... In the same book it spoke about how our school system was designed to create 40% return to farm, 20 college bound, and 40% factory workers... we spend more money on it but dont get return on our investment. Why because we have changed our society to run on innovation and service but still train for factories...

Recently watched the movie "inside job" and it hit hard. It made me question my education as an economist and what I had been taught. Free market unrestricted operates best. I have no love of regulation and think the government does a pretty poor job of everything that i can think of but... George Soros explained in a very simple way that the economy is like a oil super tanker. If you dont seperate the parts into different sections a slow ripple can build and topple everything.

I said all this by way of introduction I assume. To people out there that think about finance like this too?

The net of both of these is that without serious change in the way our country views its entitlements, education, infastructure, industry, and political system (lobbies) etc that we are doomed to failure.

Its all noise for me with anyone talking about anything other then the economy really. We need to stop trying to force kids to go to college and get debt up to their eyeballs...we need engineers, plumbers, mechanics, etc etc... we seemed to be fairly covered on communication majors...

Thoughts?