In an era when the rich and powerful line their own pockets at the expense of workers, homeowners and investors, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is striking a blow for accountability and equal justice, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. 

Schneiderman just filed a lawsuit against Bear Stearns  alleging that the former investment bank created fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.

This is the fourth of a four-part series describing what went wrong with America’s economy and how to fix it. Read  Part 1 here ,  Part 2 here  and  Part 3 here —and please leave a comment to tell us what you think. (Click the chart to enlarge.) 

To fix what’s wrong with the U.S. economy, we have to replace the failed low-wage economic strategy of the past 30 years with a high-wage strategy for shared prosperity.

The first step in such a high-wage strategy is to  put America back to work  because high unemployment keeps wages down. Our goal should be “full employment,” meaning everybody who wants to work should be able to find a decent job. We can’t allow the unfounded fear of inflation to be used as an excuse to keep unemployment high and wages low.

This is the third of a four-part series describing what went wrong with America’s economy and how to fix it. See Part 4 tomorrow and read Part 1 here and Part 2: " Tell Us What You Think: What’s Wrong With the U.S. Economy? The Long Answer "—and please leave a comment to tell us what you think. (Click the chart to enlarge.) 

If we want to fix what’s wrong with our economy, we can’t just return to the way things were before the Crash of 2008.  We have to fix what was wrong before the Crash.

And what was that?  In short, it was the failure of our low-wage economic strategy of the past 30 years, which crippled the growth engine of the U.S. economy.

This is the second of a four-part series describing what went wrong with America’s economy and how to fix it. See Part 3 tomorrow and read Part 1:  " Tell Us What You Think: What’s Wrong With the U.S. Economy? The Real Scoop " —and please leave a comment to tell us what you think. (Click the chart to enlarge.)

If the short answer is “we’re still recovering from the Crash of 2008,” the long answer is “there was obviously something wrong with the economy long before the Crash of 2008.” 

There were obvious warning signs during the Bush years that should have set off alarm bells.  Most importantly, wages and middle-class family incomes were dead in the water.  The median income for working-age families  started falling in 2000 and never recovered during the 2001-2007 recovery .

Thomas Palley , the former Bernard L. Schwartz Economic Growth fellow at the New America Foundation  and former assistant director of public policy at the AFL-CIO, joined us here today at the federation to discuss his new book,  From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics . The event is the third in the  AFL-CIO summer book series , which includes discussions with noted economists who will talk about their new books on jobs, inequality and the U.S. financial crisis. (Get details and RSVP  here .)

In his new book , Palley sets out to explain the cause of the 2008 financial crisis and what can be done to prevent another economic collapse. Here is a Q and A with the author: