=20
Quote:
"All through the '80s, the very top factors of the political elite
[of the U.S.] were in place to help quicken the process of disintegration in
order to alert the insensitive masses, to confront the self-serving
individualistic interests, and to awaken the narcoleptic and the secluded
upper-middle classes.=20
This was done by shortening the time that society could live on borrowed
money, by leading the borrowing frenzy and freeing the speculative vice on
such a scale that it would grow out of proportion; by encouraging
corruption, depravity, inequality, public indecency, and deficiency to
unprecedented levels; by bringing the victims, the poor, and the homeless
from the hidden institutions onto the main street, and by letting crime run
rampant and drug use increase and diversify, =96 all while the state
powerbrokers, Congress included, went on the loose.=20
The cumulative net effect was a low, overall, national performance and an
inevitable economic crisis at a time when ever more limited sets of options
were left for policy making. The overburdened credit lines, the financial
squeeze, a spreading sense of collective guilt, moral debasement, and
ethical drifting were, ultimately, bringing down the once-unshakable sense
of intangible superiority."=20
in The New Commonwealth: From Bureaucratic Corporatism to Socialist=
Capitalism
Page 276.
Claudiu A. Secara