
The current economic downturn was almost entirely caused by the elimination of essential financial controls (deregulation mania) which had been put into place after the Great Depression of the 1930's. This deregulation mania has been led by the Republicans, but certainly received significant support from most Democrats.
The attached chart which comes from calculatedriskblog.com shows how much worse unemployment is in the current recession. Yet 18 months after the economic crash, not one single regulation has been implemented in America to control the credit default swaps and derivatives which brought down the worldwide financial system.
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