Glenn Greenwald lays out the manufacturing of the crisis in plain English :

(1) Incredibly complex and consequential new laws are negotiated in secret and then enacted immediately, with no hearings, no real debate, no transparency [...]

(2) Those who created the crisis, were wrong about everything, drive the process [...]

(3) Public opinion is largely ignored, as always, and public anger is placated through illusory, symbolic and largely meaningless concessions [...]

(4) The Government begins with demands for absolute power so brazen and absurd that anything, by comparison, seems reasonable [...]

(5) Wall Street, large corporations and their lobbyists own the Federal Government and both parties, and (therefore) they always win [...]

(6) The people who run the Washington Establishment are drowning in conflicts of interest [...]

(7) For all the anger over what Wall St. has done, the Government -- as it bails them out -- isn't doing anything to rein in their practices [...]

(8) When the Government wants greater and greater power and wants to engage in pure corruption, it need only put the population in extreme fear and it gets its way in every case [...]

(9) On the most consequential and fundamental questions that define the country, the establishment/leadership of both political parties are in full agreement, and insulate themselves from any political ramifications by acting jointly [...]

(10) Whenever you think that the Government has done things so extreme that it can't top itself -- torture, theories of presidential lawbreaking, a six-year war justified by blatantly false pretenses -- it always tops itself [...]

Am giving you the "study notes" so you better get your arse over to his blog and get yourself "edumacated" on the 20+ years of crisis manufacturing that has taken hostage this country.

On that note, Krugman woke up, smelled the coffee and is finally calling the United States a banana republic. I've said so numerous times inside and out of this blog most recently to say this :

I've always felt their [the Bushes] southern strategy is more Latin America, not Georgia. Their ethos is more akin to banana republic dictators-in-the-making : Supressed and stolen votes, altered constitutions, co-opted civil liberties, disappeared dissidents, persecuted gays, paramilitary forces, abuse of executive powers ... the list could go on and on.