Renaming the Recession

In tearing through research on different graduate programs, I came across this passage about the dire state of the academic job market: "So it's not simply "the economy" that has given us a job crisis, as if the economy were our inexorable and monolithic fate; it's a host of social, political, and cultural forces, values, and constituencies that can be acted upon, that can be influenced and modified." (Nelson & Watt, Academic Keywords, 1999)
It struck me how thoroughly relevant this idea is to this long, unpunished series of supremely selfish and horrible choices that resulted in a worldwide meltdown which we call our current economic crisis.
We all accept the term "economic crisis" because we don't know much about it, except for that it's obvious and blaring consequences involve money: shriveled up retirement funds, wall street busting, repossessed homes, fallen financial giants (read: the dirty needle that infected the whole system), and inability to easily gain financing or find a job after getting pink slipped.
Yes, it involves money now. That money has mysteriously vanished, or in other cases, been given as government approved aid to financial institutions that are somehow legally protected from their gambling with others' chopped up investments because they know that they can push their political buddies to make the uninformed masses pay for it and blame themselves.
Regardless of your affiliation, be it R or D, Liberal or Conservative, I really don't care. Can we just come to agree on some basic facts? This should not be considered a problem caused by a faceless force. Our problems today are because of decades of mismanagement by both sides of the party line (of which there is no economic distinction between those who were making the decisions). No top-level person involved in the financial meltdown that occurred, publicly or privately employed, should be spared from forced reparations. Not like this kind of behavior is unprecedented, but how long must it go before some kind of justice is served when the general public gets screwed because of corporate shrewdness and greed? When can we stop arguing against or in defense of political leaders because we like or dislike their public persona, and start educating ourselves for collective action as a people?