years. if we average it out, economic growth has been only 1.7% for 13 years running now. the lowest rate of growth since probably the civil war. and so therefore, we have a huge problem, we need to ask how we got here and why the mainstream economy is failing. my book addresses that. i say it started a long time ago but it got exacerbated by the reagan deficits which weren't intended but they were massive. we tripled the national debt in the 1980s, then greenspan came along in the '90s and tried ameliorate the problem, massive expansion of the fed's balance sheet that created a boom in the stock market and the bust of dot com. we had that in 2000 to '01. greenspan panicked, pushed the interest rate down to 1%, which really really kind of lunatic, caused the housing bubble, that collapsed millions of families were hurt by that. bernanke then tried to double