• For decades, the American economy has grown at an impressive clip.  Growth has never been the problem
• For technological (think computers), financial (think uber-robust instruments for moving huge sums of money), and political/cultural (think American aversion to high taxes, especially on the wealthy), the monetary rewards of all this growth have bee funneled upwards, so that economic power is now concentrated at the very top, in ratios similar to the Gilded Age
• During this same time period of robust growth and hyper-concentration of wealth, the socioeconomic consequences of this arrangement were kept muted by incredibly cheap oil prices. 
• As a result, the American economy itself has become hollowed out.  Farming, manufacturing, and decentralized craft/shopkeeper culture were allowed to atrophy, leaving just those portions of the 'service' or 'new' economy that were dedicated to building and maintaining suburban sprawl and its myriad accouterments
• The keystone factor in all of this was cheap energy.  Low oil prices gave every major facet of the economy an artificially-healthy appearance.  Food was cheap, so farming could go by the wayside.  Transport of goods from China was cheap, so manufacturing could be let go of.  Gas was cheap, so houses could be built anywhere, and daily commutes could lengthen without much trouble. 
• In the suburban consumer boom decades, the healthy glow of the economy facilitated the complete corporate capture of the federal government, and the commensurate decline in popular involvement in civic culture.  Americans became almost criminally ignorant of domestic and international political affairs, and general cultural dumbness reached new heights. 

Put all these factors together, and we can see that present problems are not going to magically go away, like a rat through a snake's digestive tract.  What we have now is the end result of decades of unfolding trends and forces.  We have built all of our institutions, expectations, attitudes, and programs around conditions that do not pertain any more.  Suburban and exurban houses are never going to be used like piggy banks again, with people borrowing on home equity to finance excessive current consumption.  The green economy and renewable energy are not going to allow us to run all of the oil-dependent systems in the same way, as Jim Kunstler so ably explains.  College degrees are not going to be tickets to the good life of semi-luxury any more (as if they ever really were), and 'full employment' will recede into the past as a realistic goal.

In short, the current financial crisis can be seen as the birth-pangs of a new reality.  We can certainly try to turn things around with stimulus packages, national health care, green industry, etc.  And I don't doubt that all kinds of cool stuff will continue to be invented, to everyone's continuing amazement.  But the scale at which we do things and the basic socioeconomic units that make up society will change.  Collectivity and decentralization will become the norm, and no amount of effort to preserve the one person-one job/one family-one dwelling social form will able to withstand the onslaught of new circumstances.