mmckini: Your sources are appropriate and appreciated. the Federal account deficit will soar this year as paper shuffling revenues have screeched to a virtual halt while business is slowing and manufacturing keeps leaving our shores. The public demand for borrowing will shut off supply for growth to the private sector.
John Bogle's observation is almost identical to a quote from Kevin Phillips powerful book "American Theocracy..." when a businessman in the Netherlands/Holland bemoans the shift from making things to banking and financing which saw the end of that rennaissance period and empire. The same events took place in 19th century England and 16th century Spain. By the way, Phillips of "The Emerging Republican Majority" fame is the only intellectual that I know who has consistently warned and pleaded with Americans about the disasterous road we are traveling in letting money and banking replace manufacturing and jobs. He is no longer a Republican.
Evidently, all these past empires were populated by arrogant citizens who perceived themselves as exceptional people who knew that with the backing of the Almighty, all things would turn out right. Happy New Year.

What we have now is a system that is devouring itself to feed itself.

Much of our GDP is selling imports, financial products, takeovers and spinoffs.

" Yet the fact is that the finance sector has become by far our nation"s largest generator of corporate profits, larger even than the combined profits of our huge energy and health care sectors, and almost three times as much as either manufacturing or information technology.1 Twenty"five years ago, financials accounted for only about 6 percent of the earnings of the 500 giant corporations that compose the Standard & Poor"s 500 Stock Index. "
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" We"re moving, or so it seems, to a world where we"re no longer making anything in this country; we"re merely trading pieces of paper, swapping stocks and bonds back and forth with one another, and paying our financial croupiers a veritable fortune. We"re also adding even more costs by creating ever more complex financial derivatives in which huge and unfathomable risks are being built into our financial system. "

- John C. Bogle, founder, The Vanguard Group

"there is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency..."

"The Dow's annual gain came even after it posted its worst fourth-quarter drop in 20 years, amid billion-dollar losses at the world's biggest financial firms and falling spending by consumers."

Let's see... 20 years ago was 1988. We were just at the tail end of Reagan's reign. Republican Presidents have a disturbing record when it comes to our economic prosperity n'est pas?

Yes!!!! All Right!!! I love these pictures of dejected stockbrokers, traders, and their ilk. Keep them coming Huff Post. I love it!! Here's to more bloodsucking jerks getting their asses kicked in 2008!!!

The 16 August x/2.5x/2x :: 17-18/44/35 day Wilshire growth finale: as 07 ends, New Century, GM, (and the banks) point the way...

The positive forward motion of the entire global macroeconomic system is dependent on continuous debt expansion. In the last sixty-five years there have been only two years of US negative growth GDP. Prior to 1940 (and 1913, the Federal Reserve's birth year), there was approximately an equal number of years of balanced negative and positive GDP growth. There are limits to systematic debt creation. 75 1/2 years of massive government, corporate, and personal debt expansion have brought 1858's second subcycle dating from 1932 to its current point. The United States cyclical economic history dates from the origins of its constitution and involves just two major fractals: the first fractal lasting approximately 71 years in length dating from 1787 to 1858 and the second fractal composed of two subfractals 1858 to 1932 and 1932 to 2008 or about 150 years in length. The hall mark of Lammert second fractal conclusion is nonlinear devolution. New Century, representative of America's recent unsustainable colossal debt expansion, finished 31 December 07 at less than one US red cent at .009 pennies. GM, the microcosm of America's total manufacturing, debt, and entitlements status - sans its lack of printing US dollars - closed the year at a 18 month low.