For over a decade, now, the American economy has been on an economic rollercoaster, of an economic boom between 2003 and 2008, followed by a severe economic downturn, and with a historically slow and weak recovery starting in 2009 up to the present.

Before the dramatic stock market decline of 2008-2009, many were the political and media pundits who were sure that the "good times" could continue indefinitely, including some members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, America's central bank.

When the economic downturn began and then worsened, many were the critics who were sure that this proved the "failure" of capitalism in bringing such financial and real economic disruption to America and the world.

There were resurrected long questioned or rejected theories from the Great Depression years of the 1930s that argued that only far-sighted and wise government interventions and regulations could save the country from economic catastrophe and guarantee we never suffer from a similar calamity in the future.

The Boom-Bust Cycle Has Its Origin in Government Policy

Not only is the capitalist system not responsible for the latest economic crisis, but all attempts to severely hamstring or regulate the market economy out of existence only succeed in undermining the greatest engine of economic progress and prosperity known to mankind.

The recession of 2008-2009 had its origin in years of monetary mismanagement by the Federal Reserve System and misguided economic policies emanating from Washington, D.C. For the five years between 2003 and 2008, the Federal Reserve flooded the financial markets with a huge amount of money, increasing it by 50 percent or more by some measures.

For most of those years, key market rates of interest, when adjusted for inflation, were either zero or even negative. The banking system was awash in money to lend to all types of borrowers. To attract people to take out loans, these banks not only lowered interest rates (and therefore the cost of borrowing); they also lowered their standards for credit worthiness.

To get the money, somehow, out the door, financial institutions found "creative" ways to bundle together mortgage loans into tradable packages that they could then pass on to other investors. It seemed to minimize the risk from issuing all those sub-prime home loans, which we viewed afterwards as the housing market's version of high-risk junk bonds. The fears were soothed by the fact that housing prices kept climbing as home buyers pushed them higher and higher with all of that newly created Federal Reserve money.

At the same time, government-created home-insurance agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were guaranteeing a growing number of these wobbly mortgages, with the assurance that the "full faith and credit" of Uncle Sam stood behind them. By the time the Federal government formally took over complete control of Fannie and Freddie in 2008, they were holding the guarantees for half of the $10 trillion American housing market.