Or so he argues here.
Because fraud is mentioned as a key reason why things, in the writer’s opinion, are so bad, liberal sources like the ol’ Daily Kos have been happy to jump in with their own supporting quotes and such.
What do you think of this analysis? We doomed or what? 
I think I liked him better when he sang with Paul and Mary.
Hah, I didn’t even realize that! No wonder he went into the staid financial world. 
So if there is or might be a Depression coming, what can we, as individuals, do about it today?
I recommend panic. Followed by aimless rioting, lynchings with murky motivations, and hallucinogens in the water supply. How’s Tuesday for people?
I’m planning to retire to my evil lair until things straighten out. I have stockpiles of food, water and porn that should hold me over until after the apocalypse. I only have to hold out until October, when the world ends, then I can come out and take over.
…
…
Well, it’s a plan. Still has some rough edges…
I didn’t read through the whole article cited in the OP, but he says that “Unemployment at or Near Depression Levels”, which is total horseshit and isn’t even born out by the helpful graphs in the article, which only go back to 1948, curiously enough. Assuming that the other claims are similar, I wouldn’t fret too much about what this guy is or isn’t predicting…it’s likely to be as accurate as the guy who said that God would be beaming folks up in May.
-XT
Don’t forget doomsday cults and the occasional act of ritual cannibalism.
At the same time the % of the public in the workforce is larger now. Back in the depression the nation had about 120 million americans, a workforce of about 45 million and about 11 million of them unemployed. The U6 at the peak was about 36% so about 16 million there.
Now we have about 300 million, a workforce of about 150 million and 15 million unemployed (with another 10-15 million underemployed). The U6 is about 17% so about 26 million.
So despite the numbers being 9% vs 25%, back in the depression about 10% of the public was in the workforce and unemployed vs 5% now.
I don’t know if you can calculate it that way (I’m not an economist). But in the worst of the depression 13% of the general public was in the U6, now it is 8.5% of the public. The U6 is about 22% in California, so about 11% of the general population there wants a full time job and can’t find one vs. 13% during the worst of the depression. So the % of the public suffering from unemployment and underemployment isn’t that different.
I don’t know how comparable it is. But the % of the general public who want a job and can’t find one isn’t as different because the labor market is a bigger % of the general public now.
I’ll skip the cannibalism, but I definitely have designs for the cult. The kind that is heavily weighted toward young women who find salvation through sex with their messiah (me).
Why does cannibalism always have to involve ritual and tradition? Can’t it just be for fun?
Huh. :googles: Wow, Yastrow and Yarrow really don’t look alike at all.
I didn’t know if I was being whooshed so I didn’t say anything
Nothing we can’t hate gays and deny global warming our way out of.
Swing dancing. Swing dancing and rent parties.
Besides the percentages differences don’t these other then vs now things make a big difference? Back then most families were single income. Dad lost the only good or decent paying job and things the family had and things got bad fast. Now, most families are two income. Back then people many people were only covering basic needs with their income. Now, lots of families spend a good portion of their funds on niceties (that they think they “need”) so there is room for a reduction of income without homelessness or starvation becoming an immediate threat. And then there are the government and organized charity programs to help folks that seem to me to be more plentiful now vs then.
Yeah, today sucks for many people that are between a rock and hard place and for their sake I hope things take an upswing soon. But IMO its not near as bad as back then, though thats not to say that I don’t think its impossible for things to keep getting worse either.
Trust me, you still have to organize it to some degree, or else everybody brings the potato salad.
That’s (probably) a misleading stat. Most notably WRT women in the workforce.
In the Depression era, the rate of female participation in the “workforce” was obviously a lot lower than it is today. But that doesn’t mean that all those women were sitting around doing nothing but collecting social assistance. The nature of life in those days was such that there was a lot more housework, and most of these women were productively occupied. That has changed a lot over the years.
The same is probably true of men, though to a lesser extent - the degree of self-reliance was greater back then.
Another way of looking at it is that today the percentage of a families lifestyle that results from their workforce participation is a lot higher than it was back then. As a result, when someone is not employed today - whether “unemployed” or “not participating in the workforce” - they are (on average) being supported by society to a much greater extent than an average person 80 years ago.
The same cast of bankers, now bigger than ever, are busy looting away. Housing prices are still dropping but they do not want to renegotiate the price with the homeowner to keep them in the home. There are a couple million homes still in foreclosure jeopardy.
Instead of fixing the problem bankers cheated to rush foreclosure ,including robo signing and lying about having the deeds. They need to be broken up and the bankers need their bonuses drastically slashed. Most European governments have gone after bankers. Over here, we slap their wrists and give them tax money.
European governments are bailing their bankers out too and sending nobody to jail. The bailouts in greece, Ireland, portugal etc. are all really bailouts of German, French, British etc. banks who will make vast losses on the Greek/Irish/ Portugese debt they own if those countries go under.
What we didn’t do in 2008 was put insolvent banks through an FDIC process and sack/prosecurte their executives, sell off their assets and force investors/bondholders to take a big haircut on the bad debt while guaranteeing it to save the system from collapse. instead we bailed them out at 100 cents on the dollar and let the crooks keep their jobs. We’ve now got a bunch of zombie banks all heavily interlinked by debt that they’re pretending doesn’t exist. When the next leg of this crisis starts, probqably with a sovereign credit event in Europe, the financial system will be in shit street again.
As far as whether we’re heading for a huge depression we’re basically going to get a lost decade at best, with occasional recessionary outbreaks. Things aren’t going to recover until private debt is under control and people start spending again. But the public in countries like America have already maxed out their credit and are watching their main source of equity, their house, continue to fall in value. And we’ve got massive unemployment. And the powers that be refuse to admit that this is a demand-side problem and are still waiting for supply-side magic to bring us new economic growth. Things don’t look too good going forward.
I think he is right. Housing prices are dropping, and unemployment numbers are masked by the "discouraged jobseekers’ numbers. basically, so many people have stopped looking for work, that the “apparent” unemployment rate has dropped.
The real issue-state and municipal budgets are strained-because of years with nobody paying income/sales taxes. take California-all set to release 85,000 convicts because the prison system is broke. Many local governments have no money.
So, yes, this is the double dip. I expect obama will ram through another round of frantic money printing-in an attempt to retain the White House in 2012.
God help us.
Reading that article, I’d say somebody jumped the gun putting the hallucinogens in the water supply.