There is an overwhelming amount of economic pessimism here, and much of it is warranted. Having been marginally employed and/or unemployed for the last 2 years+ I have a better idea of this than most people. However, when people think we've done nothing but construct more and more exotic investment vehicles I have to say that they are not being entirely accurate. The problem? The gap between the mass employment that we are off shoring and the new technology which is only marginally past the start-up phase. More after the jump...
The George W. Bush/End of the Clinton era period did in fact sow a lot of the seeds that have bloomed into our economic crisis, however, I feel that it is unnecessarily bleak to state that we did nothing else (and when I say something is to bleak...let's just say you can take that to your fiscally stable local credit union :) ).
For one thing, the US began to catch up with the rest of the world in the area of alternative energy. The end of the Clinton era saw the founding of one of the largest solar power companies (and probably the largest domestic) in First Solar, Inc. (production in Perrysburg, OH with the HQ in Tempe, AZ http://finance.yahoo.com/... , which was a 300 million net profit company at YE 2008), in addition to a large number of start-ups in the Toledo area in the field of solar power, one of which was the Xunlight Corporation ( http://www.xunlight.com/... ). This goes along with the expansion of one of the long-time "workhorse" companies in the field of domestic alternate energy, Energy Conversion Devices/United Solar Ovonics which was one of the few domestic companies to expand manufacturing in the state of Michigan ( http://www.ovonic.com/... ) being set to expand to a second facility in Greenville, MI.
The United States also continues to build medical devices domestically (Stryker corporation still manufacturers things in both Kalamazoo, MI and I believe in various locations in the Western US as an example...the head of the company is a Democrat as well). And despite the fact that only Amgen has really broken through as a large company, the US is still a top Biotech center with numerous companies researching and having sales, and Obama's reversal of Bush's position on stem cell research should help us maintain our position as a scientific center.
I can see people saying, if we are making so many things why is our economy sucking? Well, the problem right now is that we have a large gap between these new companies, particularly the alternative energy companies, and our mass employers where the newer companies and combined with a credit crisis these new companies might be wiped out before they can become mass employers. The first issue is that many of our established companies are either shedding jobs massively in the thousands (All our financial companies, GM, Chrysler, Ford, auto suppliers, possibly GE depending on the status of GE Capital) while the newer companies are only hiring in the hundreds at best. There is also the issue that many of these newer companies are still in the start up phase (First Solar and United Solar Ovonics are really the only 2 large US Solar power companies out there, everyone else is still pretty small) and the credit crisis can lead to death for the starts-ups/smaller players. The medical devices are a "cash cow" type of business for US employment, but they aren't a growth industry anymore. Biotech may become a growth industry again, but they have been blocked in the US due to George W. Bush's appeasement to Flat Earthesq religious right types.
However, I'm not here to say things are good, they aren't, but to say there is no hope is not so, but we'll have to work hard to maintain the hope that is out there, lest our present difficulties sink it.