The thing is, and I have been thinking long and hard on this so I think my logic is sound, even though the big banks and Wall Street are legalized crooks, they aren't what's wrong with our economy. We are paying $3.27 a gallon for gas. Every time there has been any encouraging economic news, the price of oil shoots up over $100 a barrel. Right now hundreds of billion of $ are pouring out of America to Canada and Mexico and Venezuela and the Middle East. The money that would normally be spent by us on TV's and cars and real estate and eating out more often, etc., is being sent to foreign countries. We cannot pull out of this downturn because as the economy improves the price of energy is rising equal, or more, to the potential economic benefit of the improvements. If we don't solve our energy crisis, we will be like this for the foreseeable future. Our economic power is being drained through oil to other nations. It still takes more energy to produce solar and wind power than it creates, so there is no way without a major breakthrough, that we can use alternative energy and jobs to work our way out of this. The solution is simple and will never be enacted. Go to pre 1997 rules regarding trading oil. Only those companies that directly sell or process the oil can trade it. You have companies like Goldman Sachs sitting on billions and billions of $, just salivating over any kind of recovery to get oil back up to $150 a barrel or more.