It is frustrating to read so many comparisons of our current situation with 1929 while watching policy be set-in-motion to create spending on infrastructure. Everyone has their hand out looking for a bailout like a bunch of street burns pleading for money so they can get drunk or stay drunk. Almost nothing of what I have read is close to being accurate. The scary part is depressions are inevitably caused by politicians who may be paving the road with good intentions, but are relying upon analysis so biased, we do not stand a chance.
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The stock market by no means predicts the economy. A stock market crash does not cause a Depression. The Crash of 1903 was properly titled – "The Rich Man's Panic." What has always distinguished a recession from a Depression is the stock market drop may signal a recession, but the collapse in debt signals a Depression. This Depression was set in motion by (1) excessive leverage by the banks once more, but (2) the lifting of usury laws back in 1980 to fight inflation that opened the door to the highest consumer interest rates in thousands of years and shifted
spending that created jobs into the banks as interest on things like credit cards. As a percent of GDP, household debt doubled since 1980 making the banks rich and now the clear and present danger to our economic survival. A greater proportion of spending by the consumer that use to go to savings and creating jobs, goes to interest and that has undermined the ability to avoid a major economic melt-down.
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The crisis in banking has distinguished depression from recession. The very term "Black Friday" comes from the Panic of 1869 when the mob was dragging bankers out of their offices and hanging them in New York. They had to send in troops to stop the riot. A banking collapse destroys the capital formation of a nation and that is what creates the Depression. The stock market is not the problem despite the fact it is visible and measurable and may decline 40%, 60% or even 89% like in 1929-32. But the stock market decline is normally measured in months (30-37) whereas the economic decline is measured in years (23-26). Beware of schizophrenic analysis that is often mutually contradictory or often antagonistic in part or in quality for far too often people think they have to offer a reason for every daily movement.
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Our fate will not be determined by the stock market performance. Neither can we stimulate the economy by increasing spending on infrastructure any more than buying your wife a mink coat, will improve the grades of your child in school. We are facing a Depression that will last 23-26 years. The response of government is going to seal our fate because they cannot learn from the past and will make the same mistakes that every politician has made before them. Even if the Dow Industrials make new highs next week (impossible), the Depression is unstoppable with current models and tools.
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