[munk-a]

A while back, in the early 2000s (maybe the 90s), there was all that talk floating around about the ghost Walmarts left over when they'd over-saturate a market with box stores to kill off the competition then scale back to a single mega-location. When that was happening the US did nothing - they didn't try and protect small businesses ("it's the will of the market!") and nor was Walmart even gone after for littering.

This situation exists because the US has been overly complacent for quite a while and happy to ascribe these warning signs as mere minor side effects of the most patriotic American capitalism - this was pretty easy to do while everything was building leverage on leverage and everyone had plenty of bread on the table.

The US economy is rotten to the core, it's really unfortunate but I hope when this house of cards inevitably falls down it at least serves as a lesson for history.