The most worrisome thing about the vulnerability of the U.S. economy circa 2008 is the extent of official understatement and misstatement— the preference for minimizing how many problems there are and how interconnected they are.

This volume amplifies and updates two of the three challenges set out in my 2006 book, American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Radical religion got much of its necessary comeuppance in November 2006. The perils of housing and debt, of oil, and of the dollar have, however, only increased.

Whether the U.S. government and the Republican and Democratic parties can remedy the debt- and oil-related transformations of the last two or three decades is dubious enough. Far more worrisome is the possibility that neither Washington nor Wall Street is willing to confront the deeper problem—the ascendancy of finance in national policymaking (as well as in the gross domestic product), and the complicity of politicians who really don’t want to talk about it.