Whats your opinion? Lets keep it analytical and not political, no finger pointing or blame game............What do you think: the mortgage crisis, stocks tanking, banks failing, the bailouts, manufacturing in the toilet, job losses by the millions, the slow rolling international/global parallels to our own financial woes ...........To me, this is beginning to feel like more than just a run of the mill recession..........Again, lets leave the politics and blame out, and just tell us what YOU think the current economic situation is becoming.

I will go first,.......Depression, I have lived thru a few recessions, and this has a whole different feel and its not good. Quite a few folks I know are leaning this way.

 

Well there is no real definition for a depression for economics but I will say this, we have went thru a period of tremendous wealth inequality as wealth was concentrated by relatively few people, much of this wealth was created by easy credit and housing price increases that were way too high and people thought they would increase in value for ever. Also there was the shadow banking system with minimal regulations and Phill Gramm basically pushing thru the repealing of the glass-steagall act which is a significant reason for the current recession. Now there's no comparison to the great depression in terms of GDP contraction, unemployment and job losses but it's probally going to be a long term downturn with maybe a slight turnaround in the middle before a contiuned contraction.

 

I’ am too young for the Great Depression of the 30’s but my granddad and dad went through it and even though dad was a young man at the time he had memories as well. I have been through the recessions as well but I personally think that too much time had passed and who ever remains that was old enough to remember the 30’s have been in the past cast aside because we are now much smarter, better, and have at our disposal devices that can relay information in minutes that took days before.

I feel personally that we have approached our modern age in the same way the rich and aristocratically superior men of the early 1900’s that felt superiority simply because their ability to build wondrous works that was claimed God almighty could not put down, the Titanic was built with the same arrogance that existed it seemed of late despite many warnings to the contrary. We removed safe guards that had been in place since the last depression just as life boats had been removed in significant numbers simply because why? Titanic can not sink; it is a waste of deck space.

I have read many accounts as many of you have of arrogance in the financial world as well dating back for me to Enron, a very sore and old subject but was among some of our first warnings of bad coming as pension plans guaranteed to be there for retirement dried up as fast as Enron crashed when their own arrogance could no longer be ignored. As I followed that and the more recent to come I began to realize that with this modern age every one was blinded by fast money satisfied only by the illusion that this was indeed the modern time and fail was not an option for there would be some that would believe there was no way to go wrong, there would be one more play just as a few unscrupulous men that would load up on the life boats meant for women and children the night the Titanic sank.

I finish by writing that I apologize for the similarity and simplicity I use and I know there are many more reasons to why this happened some that still remains to be seen but my father talked of a time where there would be another depression simply because every one would forget. He had thought this time there would all kinds of money but nothing to buy but I think it will go back to before where there will be no money again for we did not learn, it seems as though we come up with the false I’ am better because we have so much more at our disposal than the earlier Neanderthal’s that had only ticker tape machines and a rotary dial phones with operators making physical hard wire connections for calls taking up to 15 minutes to complete if someone did not drop a lead then you started over again and mail that could take up to a week to get to it destination.

This was meant to be my interpretation of what I have seen and experienced watching all this while I grew up extremely poor and knew how to make a dollar stretch but did not expect more except through hard honest work along with determination to make things better rather than look for a loop hole or a fast buck that elude most and wasted by others wanting more.

 

In some parts of the country they are in a depression or at least on the edge of it. Others it hasn't affected as much though. Here we are getting layoffs, but the other markets are stilling holding up decent.

 

Lengthy recession for you guys, deep but shorter recession for us up here in Canada. Projected to end for us by the second half of 09 with good growth in 2010. Where I live there is still lots of oil money coming in, not near as much as a year ago of course but still enough to keep it rolling pretty steady.

 

No analysis on my part. Just observations.

Here, in and around Washington, DC, more and more houses are going up for sale and staying on the market for longer periods of time.
Some houses have been on the market for a year!
I've seen three families pack up their belongings late in the day and into the night and abandon their homes.
Granted. . .some of these folks admitted getting in 'over their heads'.

We are in a deep recession that is on the verge of becoming a depression.



I truly 'feel' for those that have lost their jobs, or are about to lose their jobs.
For those people, I would like to close by saying this. . . . .
Losing your job is not your fault, IF you have gone to work and actually put in a day's work. You have done your part and should have no shame.
To those that have reported to work and have 'skated' along, under the radar. It's about time to change your work ethic and suck it up and give your employer a 'good eight hours'.

There are no free lunches.

 

We aren't in either. It's an ADJUSTMENT. We haven't eve come close to the numbers for the "recessions" in the late 70s, or early 80s. Problem is that a certain party always wants a "crisis" so they can control the people. This is all that it is going on right now.

 

Recession.

There are similarities between now and the 30s, but we're nowhere near the level of that situation.....

For one thing, the unemployment rate was up to 28% by 1932....and it stayed at the mid 20s all the way up to the start of WWII. For another, aside from the stock market crash in 1929, there was an absolute run on banks in the early 30s. That whole industry collapsed. People didn't have the federal guarantee on deposits that they do now.....Caveat...There ARE a couple of small banks (the names escape me) which recently went teats-up because of depositers fleeing with their assets......But again, this is nowhere near the level....

What's the unemployment rate now? 8%? 9%

The correction/adjustment pfogle mentions is kinda/sorta correct...but it's not the whole store. The housing/real-estate situation is definitely correcting from the artificially high levels of home ownership, and home values. That was an artificial wave that persons and banks/financial institutions were riding.....well, the wave came crashing down. When the smoke clears, it'll be back to normal levels......The federal government trying to prop up the artificial homeowner numbers with taxpayer money is dangerous, short-sighted, and a harmful attempt to manipulate natural economic pressures.

Again, recession.

 

This is no different than the dot com bubble of the 90s. It's burst and now were just on the down side. Give it a year or so and we'll be back up. Thing is now is a GREAT time to BUY stocks, this will drive the market up, and speed the recovery. SPEND your money. Buy those things you want, we NEED to support the retailers to get out of this. Otherwise we're just making it worse.

 

It was a recession to me until earlier this month. That's when I was laid off, and it became a depression.

 

I would say recession, but on the brink of a depression. Sprint just announced 8000 layoffs (although that might have something to do with a lot of people dropping Sprint/Nextel like a bad habit) and Home Depot is doing major layoffs as well. I wonder if both will contiue their sports marketing campaigns yet (NASCAR)

 

That's my thoughts also.

It's going to get worse before it gets better.

 

YouTube - CSPAN Rep Paul Kanjorski Reviews the Bailout Situation

 

Ignore the first part of that video I posted, the more interesting part starts around the 2 minute mark.

 

Depression.
Lets buy stocks and buy stuff?

No way, why support greedy corporations that are brainwashing us into buying stock, then they rape our accounts and blame it on a recession. They are raiding the "vault" about every 5 to 6 years. Jesse James would have been amazed how efficiently these modern outlaws steal money.
The 401K I foolishly started in 86 has been stagnant, on average, since then.
It goes up, then it gets busted down again. Where do you think the money is going??? It goes right to the richest of the rich, not research, not quality improvement, not to hiring new skilled labor, or building new cost effective manufacturing. It goes straight to the CEO's and to the politicians that let these corporations run the country. Of course your bank accounts look good on paper for a short term, but then when it is time to account for all the money that was paid out to greedy corporations, it can't be found, then your bank accounts are adjusted accordingly to reflect what you were unknowingly giving away

If you don't see the pattern, then u r seriously need de-programming.

If I was in France 1789, Bastille day, I would have gladly helped drag the condemned to the guillotine.

I will gladly die penniless and in disgusting poverty before I let some wall street fat cat touch my money.