To Jim from EntityHub, words well put, you are correct in your analysis, but there are other deep rooted problems that are still not being answered by Wall Street, Main Street and both sides of the Aisle.

Reasons why we are Broke.....

1. Our society is told to spend, spend, spend, but no one is asking were the money will come from, heres the problem, wages haven't even come close to keeping up with the rise in prices.

2. No one saves anymore, we need to stop spending and start saving, cut back on cars, take public transportation, stop paying $400.00 to take a family of 4 to a baseball game, do simple things and spend time with family, heres the problem if we do our economy will come to a grinding hault, people will lose jobs, especially in the retail and hospitality sector and a lot of jobs will be lost considering that 70% of our economy is based on consumer spending.

3.  Unions, Unions and more Unions, originally unions were put in place to eliminate unfair working conditions and promote fair wages, heres the problem, Unions now have a cradle to grave theory that employees should be paid very high salaries while productivity is brought to a grinding hault, under performing and dishonest employees now have a voice to protect them, and employees will have a pension and medical benefits for the rest of their life, here's the second the problem...do you actually think this will fly, someone will have flip the bill and it is the companies who will have to pass the cost onto the customers as well as downsize and outsource to cheaper labor and supplies in other countries....Just see what has happened to GM, Ford and Chrysler, who are on the verge of bankruptcy.

4. Bank Regulation---Who the heck is minding the store, what happened to fiscal lending responsibility, if you continue to lend money to people who can't afford to pay you back you will have a back end problem, oh yes it looks good on paper but what happens when the bill comes due.   I laughed when banks went to congress and pleaded for a consumer bankruptcy bill, well, how come no one asked them how they permitted identity theft for so many years, what happened to picking up the phone and verifying a persons address or bank account # or calling their job to verify employment, as well as flooding the consumer who just went bankrupt with high risk interest credit cards,once a credit criminal always a credit criminal.  What are the banks going to do now, with all these foreclosures, late payments, and over extended people, you can't bleed blood through a stone.

Unless we come up with some realstic idea's on how to solve this problem, our country will continue to have an economic crisis, the well is dry, if you don't think so just sit back and watch....

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the comments. Many are taking umbrage at the title. Don't. What I mean is that the American consumer, buffeted by falling net worth, a difficult employment/wage outlook, rising cost of living, and reduced credit availability, is finally succumbing to the pressure. The title is meant to evoke the failure of a bridge, or other supporting structure -- which when you think about it, is how you should look at the American consumer in the context of recent global economic growth.

Anthony

Anthony Mirhaydari;

good attempt at a "save" but you picked your own title. How about viewing Americans as something other than "consumers" ?? We cannot survive as a prosperous nation, when 70% of our economy is tied to being compliant little "consumers". No matter what the American public does, we are told we're wrong and things are our own fault. Wages have not keep up woth inflation and we've reached our breaking point. None of us wanted to pay more for houseing than we needed to and it is ridiculous for banks to point the finger at us now. I live in the same 798 square foot home for the last 18 years. I did not "trade up" because I saw the folly on it. Yet because the banking industry had it's *OWN* people assess tha value of homes for sub-prime mortgages, my home was assessed in 2005 as being 4 times what my 1990 purchase price was. Four times. My city government got into the act by tripling my property taxes on this

"phatom increase" that existed only in the minds of bankers.Gasoline, to get to work, has also tripled in that time.Heating fuel ( I live in a state bordering Canada) has also risen sharply. Food prices have sky-rocketed.  Meanwhile my wages have remained stagnant. Deregulation of banks led to an all out greed fest and the American citizen has been left holding the empty party bag. How is it profits, enjoyed by CEO's, are "privatized", yet loses are "socialized" to the pain of the American public? What we need is a peaceful revolution and take back our country from the greedy banking , business CEO's that care very little if we have enough money to buy groceries, but want us to buy their products....

To Klondike Kate...I feel your pain and agree with most of your points, but we can't let a lot of people in our generation off the hook too.

Most of my friends are in their 40's and have spent with reckless abandon, each one trying to out do each other. Remeber it takes 2 to tango.

Do you know how many people were outbidding themselves on these small handyman special houses, I saw houses that needed a lot of work in my neighborhood get sold for 500,000 within 3 days and then watched the construction trucks pulled up to perfom another $150,000 of renovation work. The problem with our entilment generation is that they buy into a lot of what corporations, govt and Oprah have been telling them, you can have it all. I don't think so.  My parents gave me a better life not to show off and drive everyone elses cost of living up, but they had so little and want us to have a better living then they did.  And how did we show our appreciation, we all became greedy arrogant and unapprecitive. We'll like my father has been saying the last 20 years, when the bill comes due you'll all be in for the shock of your lives....we'll the check finally came.

Once again, We need to all work together to solve this problem, buzz words, talking points and i am right your wrong mentality that grips this nation has brought it to a grinding hault.

So when the economy is down it's our fault, but when the economy is up it's because of your brilliance? I see how it works.

Screw this!  Americans consumers didn't fail...We were failed, by:  Depleting job markets, OVER-inflation of neccesary day-to-day goods including high fuel prices---the biggie and everything else trickling down from that.  Bottom line is, and I wouldn't be surprised if others didn't agree, we (the American consumers) were exploited for what money we have left, especially over the past year.  Now everybody you read a headline from on the web or in the news is saying things like "recession" or "economic downturn" or "(market) panic."  In my opinion, (and that's all this is) way too many people in this country and around the world are allowed to be analysts, and none of them are any more qualified to analyze the problems around them than I am, except that they've lived in Washington or New York for a decade.  

Our Government, Senators, Congressman and woman!, President and his administration! Woooo Hoooo I am in Congress, I get an automatic raise! Woo Hoo! I will change the rules and laws in favore of banks and lender and the stock market. Some people get rich. Ooops, I makes some market mistakes. I correct my mistakes by sticking it to the average guy and gal. Wooo Hooo, I am in Congress, I give myself an automatic raise. I am never wrong, though I make the rules and laws; I just point finers. Say Congressman or Congresswoman buddie, like a raise??!!!

Its normal capitalism for CEOs to make millions, maybe 100s of millions, sometimes billions of dollars for their companies. For the stars they are they get paid millions. Those who are not stars, who loose, get fired. This is all normal. They are the same as professional athletes, singers and actors. Make you company money and get rewarded! If one or 2 CEOs is crooked it makes the news papers and everything in the world is blamed on them. There are 1000s and 1000s of companys and CEOs in this country. They got their position, because of their previous success.

Our Government, Senators, Congressman and woman!, President and his administration make the rules and laws who made this mess!!!!!!

most American's are broke because they spend above and beyond their means. We can blame gas prices or whatever outside influence you want for the state of America, but first we need to look at ourselves and quite spending beyond what we make and stop relying on credit cards to pay our monthly living expenses.  On a side note, I do agree that the government and big business has run the average American consumer into the ground and given us no reason to trust them.  the rich get richer, the average to poor are left to figure out how to survive.

I liked spoata's message! Why say the consumer is failing by just trying to be responsible and make a living? Why not do something about AIG, who when the government bailed them out to the tune of billions of dollars- their top people went to a spa, played golf and ate at banquets with our money!!!! Why aren't they responsible?

here's something to chew on......we were robbed of significant fortune after 9/11. the market dropped like a rock then. (that was tragic but nonetheless a great depletion of wealth). It took the consumer a couple of years to get things back up to snuff. (creating a false sense of security). Since then, we have had a "free"???!!!! market that has been allowed to run amok. (not freely). This set the stage for all americans to be suckered in to the "next big ripoff". Could it be that the generation of "boomers"

(the largest in history), was never to have been allowed to retire????? It certainly would put a major strain on the interests of people in charge who never should have been allowed to touch a checkbook in the first place. Survival mode, is what we are in and it never should have been allowed to happen. Instead of letting the market "weed out" its' own bad seeds, we just took another sucker punch to the jaw by rallying into the belief that we are resillient enough to keep on giving for the sake of our economy. Never underestimate the power of a large group of "stupid" people.