How likely is another Great Depression in the USA?
 

What are the chances the US will enter into a Great Depression?

Inspired by: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...pression-rise/

We're already kind of there. Unemployment, calculated the way it was during the 30s, is at a similar level today. Or was, anyway; it has recovered to some degree.

We're just not feeling the effects as much because of all the safety nets in place (unemployment, social security, etc.) Unfortunately, those safety nets can only last so long. The dollar is getting devalued because of it, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see the economy really crash in the next five years.

HOUSING valuation decline figures are actually worse than during the Depression.

:1orglaugh whats the difference between "quite likely" and "very likely"
maybe you should add "pretty likely" ;)

There's QUITE a difference :1orglaugh

not likely IMO. we do to many transactions internationally and can always expand business there. to many sources of income and revenue to go belly up :2 cents:

Enough to address the joblessness issue?

The UK won't be far behind...

I am going with the double dip depression theory.

You mean double dip recession? Or are you referring to a double dip depression separated by 82 years? :helpme:Oh crap

That might be true for large corporations but for small businesses and the average American worker THAT is the exact problem.

Just for the sake of argument, is the economy just bad, or is it in a transition.

Unemployment among the college educated is 5%, which is bad, but not terrible. Companies are actually making a lot of money. So there are positives, it's the people in the middle and low end of the economy that are struggling.

We need to focus on a plan to bring these middle and lower level Americans into the new economy.

NO no... I guess the real Depression is coming once the smoke and mirrors clear up the remainder of the TARP program. All that did was delay shit hitting the fan. Recession is not the term I would use for whats coming next. But a real Depression.

Nothing has changed regarding Labor laws and pay, Foreign trade, Financial Industry and Banking Industries. Insurance companies bankrupting everyone along with national spending and defense spending being corrupt to the core...

So its doomed to repeat and its pretty evident now that America's economic standing is on a glass sheet. Shit is going to hit the fan. Again... This time with no bail outs. The fed can not just keep printing money and expect to maintain value, and it is quickly becoming recognized that American debt is unpayable without serious serious reforms which will not happen till shit is literally burned to the ground. I am talking riots, violence and apocalypse sort of revolution.

Dumb people are in droves, they are unemployed, uneducated, and pissed. People are going to die.

We are on the rebound. Not gonna happen.

the real question is how many people who think it's very likely to happen are broke already?

lol very true

no one lives forever.

SPY @ 400 by 2015... unfortunate ...no one would be able to forever use borrow money to pay debt ... simple math ...

arrest all banks' ceo, investigate all senators... .

:warning Insider Trading Law does NOT apply to Top Government Officials like Senators..

2011 has been worse than the Great Depression. More people now than then. Hell, even weed was legal then.

One of the best trades in the forceable future is to short SPY.

If we do go into another recession, it will be even worse than 2008. We can't bail it out again and double the debt to $30 trillion. Plus, the real estate market, which never recovered, is going to drop even more with higher unemployment and never ending foreclosures.

European Rating- Agency Fari downgrades USA-Rating

Feri ranks the creditworthiness of the United States down. Feri lowers credit rating for the U.S. from AAA to AA, making it the first rating agency in general, which makes this step.

http://translate.google.com/translat...%26prmd%3Divns

YIKES. No more quantitative easing, eh?

Man, considering the economic sentiment on this forum, it's a damn good thing none of the "likely" voters sit on the Fed board.

Good idea, but it won't happen.

Middle and lower income paying jobs will keep getting outsourced to India or given to illegals here.

It's all about pushing wages down :disgust

Same reason the new teabagger governors are trying to break the unions.

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The US rocks! One time the most powerful country in the world, now China's bitch.

China is overrated. Sure, they have a massive army but they can't project them anywhere cuz China only has one carrier. Sure, China holds a lot of US debt but it's being forced to eat Geithner's mess as he unloads QE's after QE's (Quantitative easing). America isn't out by a long shot...

worse huh? have you even read about the great depression at all or what?

Has 1 in 10 of your family members died of a very curable disease? Is the bank coming to your door with a police escort to take you and your family from your home? Have you been so hungry that you resorted to hunting and eating squirrels? Have you shot all your horses and began eating them just to survive? Do you have one pair of shoes and they have holes in them? Are you forced to move out of town wandering from city to city looking for any work?

No.. we still live in a time where people are buying LCD tv's, playstations and blue ray players... Until they start selling only fruit and vegetables at your local best buy I wouldn't sweat it.

oh but they had weed, yeah that fixed everything...

The Great Depression was a deflationary period where loafs of bread cost 5 cents. When the shit hits the fan, our Great Depression will be 100x worse because it will by hyperinflationary.

Damn. This has got to be the theme song for such an eventuality:

The thing I don't get is why Obama even wants to be reelected.

Like you said, things are gonna get real ugly for whoever sits in the White House and Obama ain't no FDR.

Once the shit hits the fan, both political parties will be thoroughly discredited and the public will begin reaching out further and further into the political fringes for someone - anyone - with a solution.

That's the way it went down in much of Europe in the 30's and the same thing almost happened here with a cat named Huey Long.

http://www.gcsehistory.org.uk/modern.../huey-long.jpg

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This is a very interesting thread and I for one appreciate everyone that has contributed to it so far.

I will say that I have no idea where the US economy is headed. Logic is leaning towards some sort of a crash or at the very least a very long and drawn out painful recovery. However reality has often disregarded logic completely so I will leave the speculation to those who are paid for it

the class war in the US is over. The elite won when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of corporations regarding campaign financing :2 cents:

They tell us we came out of the recession. When? Not much has changed here.

All of the businesses that were empty two years ago are still empty, and worse, the fucking Taco Bell went out of business. One quarter of the houses on my street are empty, but what's the point being as they are selling for 1/3 of their original value. Nothing has gotten better, the price of housing is still dropping, and unemployment is still going up.

What do you mean? I think the FED's stance is that we are one more recession (or catastrophic event) away from entering deflation again.

That seems to be consistent with the "likely" voters.


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By the commonly used definition: When the decline in GDP for two straight quarters or more ended and started to go up.



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its hard to grow an economy when 99% of the wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population. If we could just get a couple billionaires to throw cash into the street, all will be well.

:2 cents:

You're technically correct and by that definition it was already over before most of us even felt it begin.

But in every sense that really matters it never ended.

Agreed. Definitions mean everything though, so people need to use other words to describe whatever pain it is they are feeling. Not everyone is in the same boat.



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Aren't you enjoying the RECOVERY SUMMER? Come on, man. Don't be a killjoy! The emperor isn't naked, it's that awesome new Dupont fiber he's wearing. PIMP PIMP!

Normally, you are pretty prescient in your take on things, but this is a bit out there. No one with real assets wants this, and the 1% has real assets.

If they were in the convenient position of being in all cash, then maybe there would be some rationale here. But don't confuse investing in treasuries with the idea that they are completely in treasuries.



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I am not sure exactly what will happen, but it will suck for the whole world if we do!

The top 400 households in the US have wealth equal to the bottom 60% of the country. This money sits stagnant for the purpose of going into trust funds for generations to come.

What's happening to the country and the planet's economies is complex, so old models like recessions and depressions may not work to describe what we are about to experience.

And there are many forces at work - digitalization, communications, population, resource depletion and changes in resource exploitation, climate and biosphere changes affecting agriculture and resource patterns, and most importantly changes in the extraction of fossil carbon.

It's hard to imagine, here in this country, what economic development could genuinely put millions of lower and middle class workers back to work in jobs that pay anything like a living wage.

I expect a pattern not so much like a depression, but instead a very long decline, what we would think of as a endless recession that slowly gets worse and worse for certain classes of society, and spreads as those classes inexorably lose their buying power.

It's possible that some innovation we can't predict now could reverse this trend - and we can propose a few possibilities - but so far there doesn't seem to be any sign of such an innovation taking root anywhere.

Nothing seems to be hitting the US economy right now, anyway.

Anybody see any signs of such an innovation happening?

I float between "not really" and "quite likely".

Things are def not good for the average Joe in the US. Inflation, food costs and most importantly interest from personal debt and thus, the continual necessary large cash flow to keep floating is chewing people up.

It may very well crash. Many think it is coming.

Exactly. In the late 80's early 90's when virtually all manufacturing was overtaken by China it spelled the beginning of the end.

It took 20 years but when you buy all your shoes, clothes, on and on and on from another country eventually they own you.

We are the military bitch going into more debt while China and other foreign countries sit by and make money off us.

We should shut down all military operations and quit actiing like this is 1955. We are a broke ass country at this point.

Something is wrong in a country when prices are the same as they were in the late 80's for most manufactured goods such as electronics, clothes , anything imported, which is everything.

Someone just posted how they come to the US to buy all their electronics, clothes, ect. We are a pig consumer nation (sorry we are) who's currency is turning to crap. Luckily the WW2 gen made good money as a whole.

As a whole we stopped making money in about 1970-1980. An education was worth a lot in the 60s. In the 80s forward it was worth crap as a whole. Mainly due to the loss of manufacturing.

The "consumption period" of the last 65 years is coming to a screaching halt as people cant even afford things at prices 20 years ago.

China would have imposed trade tariffs long ago but we go right along buying everything imported.

It's way out of hand now.

For someone to win, someone has to lose.
As emerging economies develop, existing economies will have to retreat.
Exploitation of one nation is necessary for another to live ostentatiously.

You can't push for fair trade, offshore skilled labour, and fight against worker exploitation in other countries (eg: chinese suicides in IPAD plants) if you want your own country to continue to enjoy the benefits of cheap imports...

Yep. Their killing us. They are the new Superpower for this century.

Notice noone in the US disagrees with one word I said. This is what guys are talking about. We all know there is no real money to be made for the avg guy.

Sure the military industrial complex is making money and certain industries are making money but the masses cant earn a good living and raise a family on most jobs.

You say it has always been tough and only the best survive or rise above? True but when your foundation continues to crumble and the common man is hurting, crime gets worse, upkeep on homes gets worse.. a million things get worse.

So it is getting to the point when it will affect us all. And I am already ready. If I told you what my monthly nut was you would shit. :) Super low.

Thing is, it is getting progressivly worse as time goes on.

isn't that just an illusion? one gets older and sees more, thus, 'gets worse'?