Clearly, you’re an idiot. Plain and simple.

There was no USA in 1200 AD, moron. Perhaps if we were in that time period, I’d ship you to a private meeting with Genghis Khan.

Let’s see….7 million people starved to death during the Great Depression. Do you understand that and are you saying that is also amusing to you? It is also a very poignant period in recent history that one can compare this current economic situation to. You sound as one that knows very little of that time period or of history.

The 1930’s was hardly “stone age” either. Many great things came out of that period, as tragic as it was, from the first trans-tlantic flight 3 years earlier by Charles A, Lindbergh to the music and arts of that period. There are many Billie Holiday fans to this day!

As well, the people of that time were more advanced in the use of what was available to them, and HAD manufacturing, other than heading to today’s throw-away mecca known as Walmart.

I also bet you didn’t know that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, IBM managed to grow while the rest of the U.S. economy floundered. Thomas J. Watson, Sr., took care of his employees. IBM was among the first corporations to provide group life insurance (1934), survivor benefits (1935) and paid vacations (1937).

Judge yourself on your own merits and learn and think of what it was like back then. Study and research it, then come back here and share with us an educated opinion.

There is no way out of this until the bad debt (i.e. much of the debt created over those 10 years)is entirely liquidated. That means bankruptcy for firms, banks, and ordinary people.

Sad, but the Fed should have thought about that before it created a decade’s worth of inflation/cheap credit.

We really are going to need to reduce hours of work. Nothing else is going to work.

The global economy is hyperconnected now from front to back, linking suppliers all the way through distribution chains.

How much of the “grade” of the decline (the steepness) can be attributed to less slack in supply chains, and faster determinations about laying off employees? How much of the severity of the drop is from more rapid sharing of information, and faster reactions from all economic players?

As I have said before on this blog site this quasi-catastrophe was brought on by the ruiness pricing of the fuel market for the past 8 years. These painful realities we see today are the consequence of this vicious, parasitic, and tyrannical behavior put on us all by the past Administration and the very powerful oil industry.

We must truly understand the nature of this reality today and do proper mitigation measures to eviscerate the cancer and to provide additional preventive measures to stop it from occurring again in our grandchildren’s future.

Sonnet #35

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweeter bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense-
Thy adverse party is thy advocate-
And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence.
Such civil war is in my love and hate
That I an accessory needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

William Shakespeare

It is about 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union which occurred relatively peacefully. China has opened up substantially. Japan, India, Korea, etc. are all relatively successful democracies.

The world in general was a much better place to live in 2007 than in 1929. In 1929, much of the world was still recovering from the ravages of WW I which effectively bankrupted Europe and wiped out its young men, was still in the throes of the post-Russian Revolution struggles for internal power, or had not yet emerged from 19th century feudalism and occupation.

After 30 year spending spree, empire building with debt and de facto plutocracy as political system? And NOW USA somehow magically is going to duplicate proper policy response?!

As the center of a global empire at the time, the British system of Imperial preference seemed to have been the most effective policy response of any of the major nations in terms of mitigating unemployment and falling GDP.

Today the US is perhaps the only economy with the size and depth to duplicate the British Empire’s policy response to a global economic collapse.