Flint. The economy was not good in 2007. It was built on sub-prime fake money. Not that Bush's tax cuts were responsible for this - but Bush didn't run current account surpluses in the 'boom' years. He, like Brown-Blair, defied economic logic. The 2008 crash and subsequent instability all stems from these two mistakes (repeated globally): phoney money and budget deficits.

VKemp. You espouse Randian theory but where's this absolute proof? Morality? Ayn Rand escaped soviet Russia and fell for America's capitalism. What's her explanation for the Great Depression? Though agreed it's fair the hard-working, the talented etc should be rewarded; is it moral to not help someone who's starving? Personally I always liked the Mongol Empire's redistribution system. Very fair. Not sure how it would be applied to modern western democracies...

Well I think your hero Rand said you should pay people and charge people accordingly to market rates. I doubt she'd approve of many practises in the 1990s and 2000s.

Plus I like capitalism. I don't think its flawed, but many people are. For unregulated capitalism to work it relies on virtuous capitalists. Unfortunately we live in a world of unscrupulous sharks, so unfortunately we need regulation. Doubly unfortunately only government can really regulate and it generally proves itself less than fully effective.

And I don't think its unfair to state that the same two economic mistakes are to blame for US sub prime, UK bank runs, Greek and  Spanish problems.... Iceland or Ireland's woes... even it is simplification and misses some of the problem.