Those who live in glass houses...should cast blame?

They call it the Great Recession.

No one knows who was first to coin the term, but it appears to have come into popularity around December 2008. It’s a label to sum up the pessimism of the times.

Only 1.6 percent of Americans are moving across state lines (that’s half the rate of a decade ago), a quarter of workers between 22 and 33 intend to stay with their employer until retirement, and many more are delaying or giving up on attending higher education altogether.

With such a bleak outlook on the future, it’s no wonder the nation at large would seek to assign blame.

According to a poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS, 31 percent of Americans hold the Bush administration responsible for the current economic climate. 23 percent blame Wall Street, 13 percent point their finger at Congress, and just 7 percent shake their heads at the current administration.

But does assigning blame for the economic downturn actually get us anywhere as a nation? The answer to that increasingly appears to be no.

The study comes to the conclusion that the American public largely holds Republicans responsible for the Great Recession but expects both parties to restore the country to financial security.

Assigning blame is no kind of strategy. Not for the Democrats, not for the GOP and not for the American people. And that is simply because the entire situation is too complex to accuse just one person or organization for it.

Upon taking a close look at the causes of the Great Recession, it is easy to see that it was a series of events which caused the economic downturn. No one person or organization can be held responsible. Attempting to do so only undermines any progress we could make as a nation.

Logicians refer to this concept as a sufficient condition — a single factor responsible for a condition when all other factors are absent. Such a situation simply does not exist to explain away the cause of the current economic climate.

The answer to what caused the Great Recession is far more complicated than assigning blame to any one individual.

The economic collapse is a result of necessary conditions  a series of situations in whose absence the crisis would not have occurred.

What those factors are and who is responsible for them is still up for debate.

But what we can be certain about is that there was no single event that caused the economic downtown — and little use in trying to lay blame for it.