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The United States lived on borrowed money for too long, inflating its financial sector unnecessarily and neglecting its small and mid-sized industrial companies.

Many bought into the idea that America could go from a technology-based, export-oriented powerhouse to a services-led, consumption-based economy - and somehow still expect to prosper. That idea was flat wrong. Our economy tilted instead toward the quicker profits of financial services.

We have allowed ourselves to be defined by our consumption instead of by our ability to move beyond it.

Somewhere along the way to free-market capitalism, the United States became the most wasteful society on the planet.

We became enthralled with the view that wealth trickled down from the top and that if you poured money into rich people, sort of like an ingredient, prosperity and jobs would squirt out of them like donuts. And if you understand economies in the 19th-century way, that view is plausible, and I think a lot of people accepted it.

Our own relentless search for novelty and social status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism. Affluence has itself betrayed us.

However, the economics of our business continued to deteriorate. We barely escaped bankruptcy a year ago, and in the aftermath of that escape we had to make some even tougher decisions.

We exist to have our wealth moved up the economic chain out of our reach.

The banking collapse was caused, more than anything, by bad government policy and the total failure of bad regulation, rather than by greed.

During the 80s and 90s, we all became consumed with ourselves. In the 21st century, we've come back to simpler times. People are struggling economically and this has forced them to scale back the material aspects of their lives and realise the beauty of finding the simple joy in being with the people we love.