ARE THESE "INTERESTING TIMES"?

I was listening to NPR this afternoon and a couple of interviews started me thinking that we may be in an era similar to the post-Civil War, especially after the Panic of 1873. Frederick Jackson Turner attributed the increasing social unrest in the latter part of the 19th century to the closing of the American frontier but Richard Hofstadter makes a convincing argument that the real cause in America was the decline or stagnation of farm prices.

We may be in a similar situation today because of a number of factors, including the demographic bubble of the Baby Boomers. The demand for housing by the Boomers was a precursor for the housing bubble and its widespread effect on the rest of the economy. As the Boomers retire and die, there won't be enough people to take up the slack in the housing market for quite some time, so we are probably looking at decades of financial unrest leading to social unrest. The MOTU on Wall Street have only exacerbated this problem.