Billionaire Bingo: Saving Our Endangered Middle Class* *From Detroit to Eternity

This is the story of where our lost money went. A sneaky tax tidal wave recently swamped our hard-working middle class, and shanghaied it far beyond the South China Sea. Big Oil and Big Banks slurped up big bailouts and windfall profits, paid NO taxes, and commaded us 'Middle Classmates' to bail them out. One dynamic century ago, our Motor City--Detroit, Michigan--launched both Henry Ford's billionaire parade, AND the American Middle Class. For bonus prizes, Detroit invented or perfected air conditioning, highway construction, the refrigerator, washing machine, and the electric guitar. Shouldn't we all rock with riches? Our emerging middle class enjoyed the pleasures of a limitless ocean of opportunity. Why are we now drowning in debt? Why has so much of our fading future been wrestled into submission by hedge-fund gamblers, untaxed mighty corporations, and bonanza billionaires financing governors to zap teachers and cops and collective bargaining? Why is the middle class sloshing through sub-prime mortgage disasters, predatory financial-planning casinos, student-loan debtors' prisons, tanking 401Ks, and bye-bye pensions? Do America's financial Wall Street wizards brew up a scary scenario? Must they gloomily prey upon the young, the sick, and the old? Back in the 50s, Dad supported the entire family with one good 40-hour job. Today, whole families now stagger to a six-pack of meager toilsome jobs, to put a down payment on a soggy box of Wheaties. Have the financial finaglers stolen our future? Have they dashed American aspirations into a dumpster of debt? Is the American Dream wobbling between hope and despair on stormy seas? Does Wall Street's mighty armada loom large in its quest to vanquish and squash Main Street? Do banks rob people? Are all the answers hiding in the first paragraph, inside the book, and a little bit beyond?