Speaking more as a consumer and survivor of the mostly-pointless American education system, it really doesn't come as a huge surprise that a financial breaking point is being reached by the very institutions that orchestrated the lending mess in the first place. It's quite puzzling, actually, that the actuaries behind lending money on credit and charging fees (i.e. usury) couldn't foresee that people on a fixed income can only pay a fixed amount on a loan.

There are plenty of blogs and news sites -- filled with carefully chosen rhetoric -- that will give you the skinny on the mechanics of the current crisis, but few will question the sociological sources of its origins: why did people overextend themselves with credit, using their overvalued homes as cash machines to buy a lot of crap they didn't need for survival? And why didn't anyone realize that, at a certain point, the money that comes in does not come close to equal the money that has to go out?

While thousands -- if not millions -- might suffer from a very bad recession (which is just a nice way of avoiding the word, "depression"), it also might serve as a sort of reset button: level the credit playing field, let the corporations that have operated without accountability reap what they've sown ... and start again with a better understanding of how to live within means.

As it stands, the government will maneuver itself into an even more powerful position by claming a larger portion of the financial pie, while the CEOs take the money and run.

And the already overburdened consumer/taxpayer will pick up the check.

Again.