Anniversary No. 1: Exactly four years ago, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection. In the days and weeks that followed, we saw the unfolding of the dramatic — and ultimately successful — effort by the federal government to rescue the banking system. But, once the dust settled, we began to see something else: like the stock market crash of 1929, Lehman wasn’t an isolated event. Rather, it was a signal that deep problems had enveloped our economy — problems that wouldn’t be solved quickly or easily. That is why the Lehman bankruptcy still resonates. It was the moment everything changed.

Prior to Lehman, it was easy to believe that housing prices could only go up and that we could always rely on debt to maintain our standard of living. We shrugged as manufacturing jobs disappeared — 5.8 million just since 2000 — and good middle-class jobs became harder to find. We didn’t talk much about income inequality. Nor did we care much that Wall Street had developed a mercenary trading culture, which had little to do with providing capital for companies, ostensibly its reason for being.

Post-Lehman, economic reality set in. First came the Great Recession, followed by a recovery so weak that unemployment remains at around 8 percent. The huge debt overhang is a yoke holding back economic growth. Millions of homes have been foreclosed on. The Federal Reserve has continually opened its monetary spigots to boost the economy — as it did again this week — but the problems are simply too big to be fixed by monetary policy alone. That’s the world we live in now.

Inevitably, this sense of never-ending economic struggle has led to a great deal of anger. On the right, that anger found its voice in the Tea Party. Its core belief is that government is the enemy, and that a more hardhearted approach — slashing government spending and forcing people to fend for themselves — is the best way to get back on track. However misguided, its conviction cannot be doubted.