Institute for America's Future co-director Robert Borosage said that at the heart of the financial crises is the country's unsustainable global strategy.
"Clearly, once the bailout passed, investors took a good look at the real economy and headed for the mattresses," said Borosage. "Reassuring Wall Street wasn't enough; we're headed into a great reckoning with the imbalances in the real economy. Enough about Bill Ayers or Palin's husband's flirtation with Alaskan separatism, we need a serious public debate about what's gone wrong and about what our strategy should be going forward."
The ad questions free market fundamentalism which has dominated US economics for the past thirty years. These conditions created a system in which productivity and profits rose, but wages lost ground. The nation lost millions of jobs, but because the global economy depends on American consumers, the gap was bridged by growing debt built on successive asset bubbles, leaving the U.S. as the largest debtor, adding $4.4 trillion in foreign debt since 2001.
The Institute for America's Future is urging people to bring the ads with them to public meetings, church groups and civic associations - and to discuss them on the internet - building the growing citizen demand a debate on real issues, not personal attacks or irrelevant smears.
The first ad outlined how the American dream is slipping out of reach for more and more families; the second targeted corrupt robber barons behind the Wall Street meltdown; the third looked at our spending priorities with the nation mired in massive military expenditures. Other ads in the series will focus on the broken health care system, collapsing public infrastructure and the looming global warming challenge.
