The stock markets around the world have crashed. Many critics blame the American Presidential Administration over deregulation and “failed” financial polices for the cause of economic meltdown around the world. Congress faced having to pass legislation that would spend billions to bailout the financial markets and return prosperity to the economy.

Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like the events that we are going through today, the issues being battled back and forth between John McCain and Barack Obama? Well, it should sound familiar, but that was a description of an event that began October 19, 1987.

In 1986, the US economy shifted from a rapidly growing economy to a slower expansion. There were predictions of the crash coming before it crossed the threshold. These warnings were ignored as big business and the economic “gurus” of the day focused on their policy for growth without the adjustment to changing world economic market.

We made it through that crash. Times were tough and people feared the worse. Talk about recession and depression were the same as today. People studies the crash and the resurrection of the stock market, but the lessons did not sink in. Today we face the same crisis, only bigger. It can be argued, and I would concede the arguments, that the events leading up to this market crash of 2008 were different. Yet, the underlying lessons are not.

The American people have lost confidence in Wall Street and rightly so. We have lost our trust in banks that were popping up on every street corner like candy stores. People want to pull their money out of the market and the bank and burry it in mason jars in their backyards like squirrels hording nuts for the long winter. Can you blame them?

Look at the leadership of our country. The political parties of Democrats and Republicans no longer represent the philosophies ad people they did only a short forty years ago. Today we have political leaders that want to attack and bash, rather than heal. We have political parties that believe in their absolute stance rather than look for compromise. We have Senators and Representatives who are not looking out for the working person and would rather stuff non-economic pork into a budget bailout than focus on fixing the economy.

The common person gains their confidence from the people who lead them. Look at President Bush, look at Speaker of the House Pelosi, look at Paulson, Bernanke, and all the others. Listen to the McCain and Obama campaigns. What do you see and hear, if not a constant march of pessimism across the American and world television screen. How can the American people regain their confidence in this economy if the people who are suppose to be leading us are more worried about their political careers, what history will say about them, and political power base built upon the corporations who have train wrecked us than if the middle class family can afford food or gas? Our leaders have all forgotten one of the most critical rules of economy of the modern age: Build upon the middle class and the economy will grow. Shrink it and the economy will fail.

David Alan Lucas