Apparently, 8 years of Bush’s alternate universe also infected TV viewing habits in general, and cable news and opinion in particular. Along with irredeemable crap like Big Brother, American Idol, Big Fat Losers, Desperate Houswives, CSI: Miami and so on and on, younger Americans have drifted so far to the right in their world view, especially since 9/11, that they now prefer to listen to, and perhaps agree with reactionary windbags like Hannity or Limbaugh, rather than the wonkish, often smug but rational commentary of someone like Maddow. Or maybe it’s just that younger viewers in the more sophisticated cities have left TV in droves for the internet, leaving guys like Hannity to pick up this cohort in the more politically right-wing enclaves of the south and west.

Whatever the real reasons, Maddow is essentially preaching to the choir, and it’s a smaller and smaller choir every month. She could end up on the broadcast equivalent of a milkbox in London’s Hyde Park, but she’d likely be cancelled before that happens. Despite the depth and complexity of the issues she intelligently confronts and the quality of the guests she invites on her program, her audience seems turned off by something. Her handlers at MSNBC ought to figure out what that is and fix it, before it becomes moot.

WWII, with deficit government spending and regulation on private enterprise to an extent which dwarfed New Deal programs, had something to do with the end of the Great Depression.

the burden to pay is falling increasingly on the workers who are most at risk of losing jobs, homes, and pensions/retirement funds.

About whom GS couldn’t care less. People should have realized when Volcker was Fed chair that only the big financial institutions are worth consideration. Greenspan and Bernanke share(d) the same views.