Forecast remains stormy for nation as decade wraps

Granted, if you want to argue fine points, this decade doesn't end until next New Year's, but don't we want to get this miserable 10 years behind us?

Ten years ago, things were pretty good.

By the late 1990s, the federal deficit had been eliminated, and we were paying off the national debt for the first time in a generation. The “national debt clock” in New York City was turned off; its sponsor hadn't thought to program it to run backward.

The unemployment rate stood at 6 percent nationwide, 5.3 percent in Iowa.

In late 1999, we had to make up things to be worried about. Remember Y2K?

“What was the big news story in the 1990s? It was Bill Clinton's infidelity,” said Don Damsteegt, professor of psychology at Mount Mercy College. “Compared to the big news stories of this decade, we would kind of welcome something as innocent as infidelity on the part of the president.”

“I think I would call it the anxious decade,” said University of Iowa sociology professor Kevin Leicht. “We had the contentious and much-disputed Bush election. We had to explain to the world how the candidate who got 5 million more votes lost. With 9/11, we had the emotional fallout from that, and we have the political fallout we're still dealing with. From that point onward, we're really dealing within a lost decade.”

In a time that saw Americans more divided than ever over virtually anything, we seem united in one thing - our dissatisfaction with the decade, whatever someone may decide to call it.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this month found 58 percent of Americans calling the decade “awful” or “not so good,” and 29 percent “fair.” Just 12 percent said it was either “good” or “great.”

Maybe the best one can say about 2000-09 is that we need some time to think it over.

“A lot of it depends on what happens in the future,” said Coe College political science professor Bruce Nesmith. “We have a lot better picture now of the '60s

than we did on Dec. 31, 1969.”

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“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” - Presidential Daily Brief, Aug. 6, 2001

Not even an event of the magnitude of Sept. 11, 2001, could unite Americans for long.

“In October of 2001, we had so much sympathy directed toward us, and the eyes of the world were upon us, and we systematically and repeatedly blew it,” Leicht said. “I don't think we're anywhere near digging ourselves out of that hole.”

Added Nesmith: “What's most surprising is how well we've absorbed it into our political system. We're used now to going to the airport and taking off our shoes.”

It was a decade of chickens coming home.

Just as Osama bin Laden first gained notice in the 1980s as part of the American-supported mujahedeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, two key conditions for the collapse and subsequent taxpayer-funded bailout of the world financial system came when President Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (aka the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

“It's a result of all this financial innovation that really started as a result of the deregulatory mood associated with the Eighties and the Reagan administration,” Coe economics professor Rick Eichhorn said. “There was this great push to bring down market barriers and let markets work.”

Remember the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s?

“We see this all the time,” Eichhorn said. “When the economy picks up and everyone's doing well, firms lobby to have the regulations torn down. So we tear down the regulations, and people take on more risk than they should. It gave rise to an attitudinal change that these things were OK and this belief, that we now know was incorrect, that these institutions would be compelled to self-regulate.”

A year after Americans were told they must spend hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilize the financial markets, Wall Street's five largest banks are bigger than ever, while mortgage delinquencies continue to rise and small businesses can't find loans.

“I'm not trusting anything regulatory at this point,” Eichhorn said. “I'm not optimistic at all that what will come out of Congress will be the best for the general public. They've proved over the past year that they can't.”

The financial pain is personal.

“Almost everybody knows somebody who's been laid off,” Damsteegt said. “Peoples' 401(k)s are worth less. Some people are reluctant to retire because you can't be sure you've saved enough.”

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At least we could escape into pop culture. Even there, we were all headed in different directions.

“With the passing of Michael Jackson, that may be the last time a mass audience that is increasingly getting fragmented is going to have a touchstone that is widely recognized,” said Kembrew McLeod, UI associate professor in communication studies. “Over the course of this decade, there is no one figure in pop culture that unites everyone. This may be the last time a whole generation can recognize one pop culture figure.”

Even as the new media allow millions of fans “access” to their chosen icons, it also allows millions of non-fans to ignore him or her completely.

“You can tune in to an Internet radio station that is so specific to your taste that you don't ever have to listen to anything you don't like,” McLeod said. “Fewer and fewer people are tuning into a ‘M*A*S*H' or a ‘Seinfeld' on television or listening to a big radio station in your city.”

Which may not be a bad thing.

“People, especially college students, seem to be listening to a wider range of music,” McLeod said. “With the decline of centralized radio stations that spewed up a relatively small range of selections, I've noticed people are stumbling across a wider range of programming.”

So as we head into a jobless recovery - or even another wave of recession - at least we can choose our own soundtrack.

“A lot of key issues or problems were passed on, were kind of kicked on down the road,” Nesmith said. “I don't think the Bush administration, which was, of course, the dominant presidency of the decade, is entirely to blame for this, but they were simply willing to kick a lot of problems down the road.”

And we carry the load now.

“Who stands to gain the most from tearing down regulations and viewing things from the supply-side lens? The people at the upper end of the income stream,” Eichhorn said. “Since the 1980s, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, and it's gotten worse every year.

“Do you still believe in the American dream, or do you think someone has co-opted the system? I think it's the latter, quite frankly.”