70% off! 50% off! Buy one, get one free! I’m sure you saw  all of these this past weekend… it was Black Friday after all. We’ve been told that shopping this past weekend would help the economy, but many of us don’t have the funds to do the shopping….but we still do it anyway. We’re supposed to, right?

We should be saving more, consuming less, and paying down debts. This last decade has been quite the shock for many Americans. We just aren’t used to this type of thinking. We’ve been hit with a slowing economy, high unemployment, and a government that doesn’t know which direction to take us.

Jeff Frieden’s book, Lost Decades: The Making of America’s Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery, explains the origins of United States’ financial crisis and attempts to spell out the long-term effects. This is a must read for any financially inquisitive American!