The Second Great Depression? It's too soon to judge

[marmar]

from the Globe and Mail (Canada):



The Second Great Depression? It's too soon to judge
ROY MacGREGOR

March 2, 2009 at 9:59 AM EST


We will leave it to history to pinpoint precisely when Chicken Little became an optimist -- but for me, the moment happened on a cold, wet morning last week.

There will be blood, screamed the Globe and Mail headline. The worst is yet to come, predicted a talking head on Canada AM.

We should be so lucky if only the sky were falling.

As my colleague Ian Brown wrote in the Saturday paper, the financial headlines these days are enough to "make your eyeballs bleed." But it is not just the headlines on the business pages. It is the headlines on Page 1 of those newspapers that are still publishing. It is the top of the newscasts that are still being cast in smaller centres. It is the 24-hour news channels in Canada and the vested-economic-interest-in-scaring-the-bejeezus-out-of-people that defines CNN and Fox News. It is the hundreds of Internet news sites, the day- and night-long onslaught of e-mails from those angry interest groups that vacuum addresses out of cyberspace and the millions - billions? - of blogs out there hoping there are still people on this Earth who aren't blogging themselves and have the time, and interest, to read their rants.

Somewhere along the way, news stopped being news and became reaction, with reaction to the reaction what "advances" a story from minute to minute in a world that used to work from day to day. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090302.wmacgregor02/BNStory/Front