At their lowest point during the Great Depression, US housing prices sunk 25.9% from the highs of 1928. That had previously been the record drop here in the states — but new data reveals we actually surpassed that low months ago. According to the Zillow Home Value Index, in November of last year, housing prices plunged to full 26% of their highs in 2006. The drop marks the 53rd month in a row that prices have fallen. This graph from ZHVI charts the decline seen in November 2010:

So, to recap: Housing prices are still falling over two years since the bubble first burst, foreclosures continue to run rampant (though among the sparse good news from November’s data was that they’d slowed some), and unemployment continues to hover around 10%. One in ten people in the US, the wealthiest nation in the world, cannot find work.

And though unemployment is nowhere near as high now as it was the last time the housing market hit record lows — in 1933, 25% of Americans were jobless — it’s nonetheless interesting that this, the 2nd worst recession in 100 years, has provoked none of the reformist dialogue that took place in the 30s. In 1933, capitalism itself teetered on the brink, and leading academics and intellectuals dismissed it as a failed system.

Today, many are inclined to view the succeeding decades as a narrative of capitalism triumphant, with economists taming the boom/bust cycle using monetary policy and socialism collapsing at the end of the 80s. But the recent crisis seems to offer an opportunity to reexamine some of the notions about capitalism that we hold as self-evident truths. Take another look at those numbers: The value of Americans’ homes continue to plunge, often until they’re worth far less than their owners originally paid — due to forces now entirely out of their control. Check out that unemployment rate, which still refuses to budge.

And the bust in the market itself, for which honest Americans are now paying, stems directly from the dubious investment decisions of a small handful of the very rich. It’s a well-known story at this point, but I think we should reconsider the conclusion we’ve seemed to have reached thus far: That bankers will be bankers, and occasionally their financial innovations will backfire, and throw entire segments of the economy into disrepair. The recourse thus far has been to install some ill-defined regulations that may or may not tamp down on some of Wall Street’s more odious financial instruments, and hope it won’t happen again. It simply seems odd that we’ve settled for these insufficient measures in the face of such injustice, without pursuing real reform.

It’s just hard not to imagine that we can do better.