How they will view the recession in 100 years

I have been thinking a lot about the current recession, like every other American, and I was wondering if part of our problem was that we have a very narrow historical view of what is happening.

What got me thinking was the way people are running around saying that the current problem is all Clinton's fault. Or Reagan's. Or Carter's. I'll betcha that the crisis in the 70's could be traced back to the 50s, and the way the economy was restructured to accommodate the suburban explosion of post-war America. 1950s America was the result of a deficit-friendly government providing college educations and jobs to most white Americans.

Before that, we had the war-industrial complex with a depression sandwiched between two huge wars. But what came before World War I? What was so significant about the last third of the 19th century?

How bout this for a thought. The problems we are facing now are just a continuation of the economic structure that was invented in the second half of the 19th century and the first few years of the 20th. That was when a few significant things happened:

1. America began to become a dominant industrial economy
2. The focus of our economy moved from farming and slavery to industry and ownership
3. We stopped focusing on producing and started to focus on owning

I'll probably formulate this more later. But an economy based on consuming more than it can produce, and a constant borrowing to pay it "later". I have a feeling that maybe we've reached the end of this. I'd love to read a really macro historical view of the last 150 years or so in terms of economics.

ok enough for now. wake up people - dancing with the stars is on.