Fiscal responsibility or give up?

I've read quite a few articles about the financial crisis trying to understand what's going on. But for all the explanations and information I still only have what I would describe as vague answers. My first question was how is it that all of a sudden there is a huge financial crisis? Where were all the economists for the last five years, year or six months? As you can imagine, there were people who saw the problem and wrote about it their voices just didn't make the evening news or the front page. In February Ben Stein wrote an article in the NYT, "The Unending Allure of the Free Lunch." A few lines from the article: "ultra-high-interest lending and borrowing, come to mind as I contemplate the subprime problems that face this great nation. In a few words, here is what happened in the subprime debacle:" He then goes on to give a lengthy example that does a pretty good job of describing the problem. But apparently the subprime issue is only part of the problem.

My second question was whose fault is it? The answer to that one seems to be as complicated as the crisis itself. But back to Ben Stein's article, we need regulations to protect us from all the crooks out there. And as much as I would like to just blame the Republicans and their push to deregulate the truth is there is lots of blame to go around. The best thing is to get on with trying to fix the problem. There is a decent article in Newsweek by Fareed Zakaria, "There Is a Silver Lining". He basically says it's time to pay our bill, words that need to be said again and again - Americans borrow too much. The federal gov. has been borrowing an ever increasing amount of money almost since it began. Former Comptroller General David Walker was on Bill Maher's show recently. He was there basically to make the point that America is in deep debt, not 10 trillion but 55 trillion, something like $450,000 per household. On the show he didn't explain this number but his website or rather the foundation he is the pres of, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, states the additional amount is due to Medicare and Social Security. I think we all have to expect to make sacrifices. We should be forgetting about cutting taxes and focus on cutting spending. And if you look at the federal budget it's easy to see that Social Security and the military are where the only meaningful cuts can be made. Those two costs alone make up more than two thirds of the budget (over 800 billion military including our wars, 1.5 trillion for SS and Med.). It seems to me the longer we wait the worse it will get. But one of the problems with a democracy is that difficult choices are not made. Both sides play off each other to the point that taking a stand on difficult issue means political suicide. So it's up to the voters to educate themselves adequately so they can request and then support the needed diffuclt changes. But in reality this will most likely never happen at least not until disaster rains down upon us. Can you say risk management? Time to be an umbrella salesmen.