Letters to the Editor
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Short-term focus
Recessions come and go; the ability of governments to do anything about them is limited. With those economic cycles (and a major cause of them) will be the usual cast of reckless lenders, reckless borrowers (and, in the housing crisis, they weren't Wall Street types, they were millions of Joe and Jane Averages borrowing to buy property in a game of pass-the-parcel) financial engineers, insider traders and other assorted crooks. Historically, the financial engineers have always managed to stay one step ahead of law enforcement; I recommend reading a book or two about the junk-bond shenanigans of the 1980s for an example.
But, despite all that, the American economy has continued to grow faster than most other developed countries over the past couple of decades. So why hasn't that made the average American feel richer? What's been screwing 95% of the American population over the past couple of decades is that the richest 5% have been creaming the benefits of economic growth for themselves. Most of that is going to the richest 1%, maybe even the richest 0.1%. And that has had a far more profound effect on the financial security of the average American than the ephemeral rumblings of the financial markets.
Putting up the tax rates on the most wealthy, and using the proceeds to finance (for instance) single-payer health, would be the most profound way to redress this balance and improve the financial security of the vast majority of the American populace.