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Technology blogger Ed Zitron properly tied the disaster to the financialization of Big Business generally, in which pumping ever higher profits to shareholders becomes a higher priority than ensuring that one’s products meet quality standards.

The massive financialization and deindustrialization of the economy that has transformed the country followed the Republican blueprint to the letter.

President Bill Clinton, for example, supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, which undermined American manufacturing; the administration also endorsed the Banking Act of 1999, which accelerated the financialization of the American economy.

Two years later he published “Bad Money,” which faulted what he called the “financialization” of the economy and came out within weeks of the market crash of September 2008.

As economist Joseph Brusuelas points out, since the 1950s the U.S. has seen “the growing economic importance of the service sector, the rise of the technology industry and the financialization of the broader American economy,” all factors in reducing the economic impact of an automotive stoppage.