The crisis emerged from the way in which corporations (both banks and non-banks) interacted with workers and consumers and the way in which corporations, workers, and consumers interacted with governments. No one of them is "to blame" since all of them behaved according to the economic system's rewards and punishments. Thus the proper cause of the crisis is the economic system: capitalism. The problem is that for many years it has been unfashionable or even dangerous to question, let alone criticize the system itself. Capitalism, we were endlessly told, was "efficient" and "optimal" - the best possible system - and so on. Only criticism of this or that economic actor was possible. Hence we called one actor "greedy" or another one "imprudent" and so on. However, like all previous economic systems (e.g., slavery or feudalism), capitalism has its time of growth and prosperity and then it has its time of decline. The real and basic question for the world today is this: has capitalism peaked? Are we now on the downward phase of a capitalism that is increasingly unable to serve peoples' needs. Today, hundreds of millions of people are unemployed and want work. Economists estimate that 20-30% of our capacity to produce (machines, tools, factory, store and office space) are sitting idle, gathering rust and dust. Yet global poverty could be eradicated with the output we could have if those who wanted to work could be placed together with available industrial capacity. Yet it is the capitalist system driven by profit that is failing to produce the wealth we need and are capable of producing. It is capitalism that cannot find a proper balance between people and nature that does not destroy both. The economic crisis is a problem of the system. It is above all a capitalist crisis.