Look no further than the disastrous Bush administration and its Democratic supporters (yes, I said Democratic supporters) for the immediate cause of the plunge.  A staggering $2 trillion wasted or committed in Iraq.  A massive hemorrhage of money in the worst trade deficit in US history which is directly attributable to an ongoing policy of outsourcing American jobs.  Continued transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the already obscenely wealthy, directly attributable to tax policies of the Bushites and their eager Democratic enablers (are you listening, Max Baucus?). 

Many intelligent persons have tried to raise the alarm about this ongoing train wreck, but the Bushites went deaf to criticism long ago.  Blinded by their drive

Behind the short-sighted Bush policies is another deeper reason for the stock market crash – capitalism itself.  Since Reagan, the neoconservatives and their allies such as the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC), have relentlessly moved to dismantle the checks on laissez faire capitalism that were installed in the Roosevelt New Deal to save the capitalist system itself.  Blind to this history, the neocons followed their utopian dogma and freed banks, corporations, and private companies to indulge again in the orgy of borrowing and spending that brought us the 1920s boom and the bust of the Great Depression.  

We stand on another brink.  What is left of the US economy is the continued support of China (and the US military), that is now joined at the hip with US capitalism.  China dare not stop buying up our debt lest their own economy, increasing based on the same laissez faire capitalism as in the US, plunge into recession and they experience a revolt of unemployed workers.

Lead by the US Federal Reserve and all the other private central banks, the US is taking one more desperate gamble to save the system.  They are slashing interest rates and throwing inflation worries to the wind.   They are trying to balance a teeter-totter by piling more and more load on each side.  As the tip goes one way the load up the other side, and then rush to the other side to pile yet more weight.  The end result is not a balanced system, but one that will break in the middle. 

Unchecked capitalism is inherently unstable.  The Bushites have added extra instability to an already unbalanced system.  Stand back, she’s about to blow. 

There is no cure for this mess short of revolution.  When common people around the world decide to link arms and resist the fascist tide, then and only then, will a new system be able to emerge.