Reinforcing this nationwide shift toward radicalism—the sudden lurch of the entire political consensus to the left—was the growing awareness that all this unemployment and extreme hardship were ultimately unnecessary. The collective misery was simply the result of laissez-faire capitalism gone wild, the maniacal exuberance of Wall Street financiers who had stoked an express train until it careened off the tracks, leaving others to pick up the pieces of the wreck while the guilty fled the scene.4
