A tremendous surplus was squandered and lost into ever deepening deficits, tax cuts were given to the rich who lost it all in hedge funds that did nothing but move paper around. Innovation was actively shut down. The telephony advances were destroyed for ATT to hold their hegemony, internet 2 was stopped by the Bush administration, stem cell research was shut down, basic science research was gutted. Capital was shifted from research and innovation to building stick houses, and not even with any efficiency standards. Thrown up as they have been the last fifty years. I can’t think of a worse use of capital. We flushed a trillion dollars down the Iraq toilet, and managed to destroy countless families both here and abroad in the process. CAFE standards were gutted which stopped all innovation in the auto sector and led to the highest gas prices since the late 1970’s. The US became a nation that tortures and kidnaps, that taps phones and cowers in fear and self doubt, that hid information, and let religious fanatics make science and policy decisions. It was lost, all lost. The lost decade. It is like we wasted ten years. Can you identify a single major innovation? Everything was status quo, incurious, how can we be surprised in the absence of any future thinking that we wallowed in a decade of nothing.