I was born two years before the '29 crash and grew up during the really hard times of the Great Depression.
Now it looks as though I will probably go out during another Depression.
Now that’s depressing.
As the Elder Statesman of SDMB, it’s your duty to stick it out until the financial crisis is over!
OK, buddy, I’ll try. But Year 2050 is going to be a stretch.
Good! I’ve always heard you were a trying person! 
Holy crap!! You’re like the guy who saw Halley’s Comet twice!
Only except this one not so much fun.
I have nothing to add, except my sincere appreciation that you are posting on this message board.
History repeats itself, and we are supposed to learn from it - however human nature being what it is I understand we all try to to cut corners where possible.
KlondikeGeoff, if I ever find myself in your part of the woods, please accept my invitation to share a bottle of wine, if not for anything else than in the hope we may laugh.
If KlondikeGeoff is right, I have a feeling that alcohol consumption will go up.
I graduated high school into the recession of the 80’s - that was bad enough. Fingers crossed that we don’t go even that far again, never mind a full-blown depression.
Geoff, I have a grandmother who’ll turn 94 in January, and I often wonder how she feels about this whole business. She grew up in a single-parent home (great-granddad died when she was 12) and had to help raise four brothers through the whole Depression. I think she probably feels the same way you do.
Yeah, those times marked an entire generation. The comedian who said “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich. Rich is better.” wasn’t kidding.
Another once said, “If you grew up poor, it does not matter how wealthy you get, you still go through the house turning off the lights.” Too true, I still do that. 
OK, JimNightshade, thanks. If you ever get to the wilds of AZ we’ll hoist one to the good ol’ times.
You should post more often. The world needs your decades of wisdom.
OK, ask me anything and I’ll give you a wise(ass) answer.
Thanks, anyway.
My dad, now age 86, was abandoned at an orphanage BY HIS OWN FATHER, because mom had died of a botched abortion. My father and his brother were fobbed off on distant relatives at the height of the Depression. 
Perhaps because of this, my dad became a world-class commercial banker (he opened branches in London, England and Sydney, Australia, and loaned Sears Roebuck I don’t know how many millions of dollars) and he is totally ashamed of the current banking/mortgage disasters & those responsible for these scenarios.
I’m ever appreciative of your Elder Statesmanhood given that my maternal Oma is closing in on 90 next year and never really cottoned onto computers so it’s a bit hard for us to share stories. Not to mention that she lives in AUS and I live here in the US. I just got a book that’d been in her library for years and a card from her, so she’s been on my mind today.
I love seeing posts from KlondikeGeoff.
Geoff, you’re about 7 years older than my departed father. My dad was a kid in Scotland during WW2, and let me tell you we live in very prosperous times compared to that era. My dad told me stories about trapping rabbits and cooking them over an open fire just to have a good meal!
I’m sure the great depression was similar. Hopefully the economic policies regarding spending our way out of this recession are valid. I think they are.
Of course, then Americans will be derided for not saving enough. 
One bright spot in all this doom-and-gloom is that we have much better economical sciences that we had in the 30’s. Hopefully the bright people will have a good idea of what to do, and the politicians will actually listen to them.