1. Our credit system is under siege. Credit is the oil in the engine of our economy. It is the currency of trust and it has been massively abused. No credit, no economy.
2. Wall Street started it. The "Street" is out of control. The complexities of current financial instruments defy anyone’s ability to understand them. No real value has being created. Only wealth for the inventors and purveyors of these arcane instruments. The very notion of what constitutes a "bank," commercial or investment, has been lost. What comes of the recent restructurings remains to be seen.
3. Main Street is guilty too. For the past several years, "Joe potential homeowner," egged on by unscrupulous mortgage brokers, has been borrowing like there was no tomorrow, accumulating debt while living in a state of happy denial in relation to their true means. People didn’t just borrow against their homes; they "borrowed" against their integrity. And it has cost them dearly.
4. Campaign Finance is a cancer in the system. Money flows to and from lobbyists and other groups who care only about protecting the special interests of corporations and industries, which in turn are influenced by politicians. Their job? To protect us, but they don’t. Campaign finance stokes the fires of excess.
5. Regulation has come up woefully short. With few exceptions, none of the agencies designed to oversee our economic health have functioned properly in recent years. They too have been compromised, often succumbing to the same pressures noted above.  No one is watching the store.

The Identity Connection

Many parties made the current crisis happen. People forgot their fundamental roles in the larger scheme of economic, social and personal value creation. Main Streeters and Wall Streeters alike abandoned the human beings inside themselves in the name of instant gratification - and integrity went down the drain.