The Nation: The Second Great Depression

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The Second Great Depression
By Nicholas von Hoffman

March 3, 2009


The pause morphed into the correction, which got transmogrified into the drop in business, which shifted into the crash. The crash became the slump, which changed into the downturn and/or the slide, or the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Scarier yet, President Barack Obama is now warning us that unless his rescue plan goes through, "our economic crisis could become a national catastrophe."

What say you to that, sports fans? Many are starting to say it looks as though we are heading into--or are already in--another Great Depression But what might a depression be? Although the word has been used in connection with bad economic conditions since the late eighteenth century, there is no agreed-upon definition comparable to what economists have for the word "recession."

There is agreement on one thing: a depression is a helluva lot worse then a recession. It means not just hard times, but very, very hard times lasting a very, very long time. Two, three, four, eight years. You might say a depression is an extended national catastrophe.

How will we know if and when we are in one? The usual comparisons to where the country is economically are with the Reagan recession of 1982, not with the Hoover Depression of 1929. We will know if we are in a full-blown depression when people begin using the word matter-of-factly. Or we'll know it if Warren Buffet tells us we are. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090316/howl?rel=hp_currently