Minority?? Opinion follows: The rot is at the core, the Federal Reserve. My parents saved money in a savings account for their eventual retirement. It was a pr

Minority?? Opinion follows: The rot is at the core, the Federal Reserve. My parents saved money in a savings account for their eventual retirement. It was a prudent and accepted way to do things. Over time, with Reagan and deregulation of everything that followed, their savings rate effectively dropped from 5-8% to zero. That income was expected to fund part of their retirement, and it was stolen from them in order to prop up wall-street. Those zero and near-zero rates distorted fiscal reality in the US and elsewhere they've effectively broken the system. At some point, we'll be bailing out whole countries to keep kicking the can down the road, and that's when things will be too big to save and we get to The Great Simplification. I only hope we've got alternatives to fossil fuels figured out at scale and somewhat in place, otherwise civilization could collapse in World Depression II.