A former colleague of mine with an MBA made several trips to one of the former soviet republics. He found it necessary to explain in detail just what "capitalism" is. They hadn't a clue.
Although I see parallels between what happened to the Soviet Union and what will happen to us, I see a key difference. There will be a very large proportion of the population which has seen how good things can be. Some of these people are ignorant liberals today. They just might lose some of their ignorance when it is THEIR dinner which is at issue.
A FReeper much wiser than myself once pointed out to me that it "Took 70 years for the Soviet System to collapse, and they started out with a whole lot less to burn through than we have now."
So, to your point, I think that we'll eventually get to rock-bottom, but it will take a long, long time. The only question, and one that we won't know the answer to for a good while, is "When did the decline start?". I'd say, "With the Kennedy Assassination.", but that's just a guess.
For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth here on FR, Obama is not the instigator. At most, he's putting his foot on the accelerator, that's all.