What event do you think will end The Great Millenial Depression?

[Stinky The Clown]

(But Stinky, a depression is defined as ....... growth in GDP ........ successive quarters ....... zzzzZZZZzzzzz. Its a big "D" Depression even as it may not technically be a little "d" depression. Also, this has very little to do with Obama. I do not hang this on him. We can debate the efficacy of what he's done, but the root cause for this is all repubican. Period.)

So back to the point of this post . . . . . .

The Great Depression is commonly held to have begun on Black Tuesday, in 1929. It is commonly held to have ended as a result of the incredible mobilization of every aspect of the economy brought on by World War II. Recovery lasted well beyond that as a result of the unmet demand brought about by wartime rationing, which effectively stopped the forward progress of society for five years. Yes, it was all more complicated and nuanced than that, but those are the essential facts.

As we watch our leaders try to navigate us out of this economic shit storm, it is clear that no one has the solutions yet. Some say there are no solutions to be had, apart from long term pain.

Maybe so.

But if that's not the case, what event (or what type of event) do you think will be the catalyst to knock us onto a track to recovery and prosperity.

I have no doubt that prosperity will return. I have lots of doubt that I will live so long as to witness it.

[slackmaster]

1. The Great Restaurant War

May I take you out to dine at Taco Bell?

[rampart]

12. dark ages

sorry, misplaced post

[Taverner]

2. Technology advances in genetics and nanotechnology

Besides that, I got nuthin'

[Fumesucker]

3. Sarah Palin getting elected as POTUS of course..

We will be beyond "Depression" and at "Thunderdome" before you can say "You betcha"..

[Stinky The Clown]

6. That's not funny ......

..... because it is quite possible.

[Fumesucker]

8. It is a truism that the funniest things are true..

And I agree that it's possible, I'm not sure about the "quite" part yet though..

[Bobbieo]

26. Agree with you, Stinky - It is more than possible that Palin will become president!!!!

[Synicus Maximus]

4. You answered your own question, all we need is a good world

war. These little wars like Iraq and Afghanistan are just not big enough to turn the economy around.

[blindpig]

5. War.

The tried and true capitalist solution.

Anything else would be 'socialism'.

Can't have that.

[marybourg]

7. The Great Infrastructure Upgrade: a civilian conservation-like

corps will go out and upgrade McMansions and Starbucks that have fallen into disrepair.

[Warpy]

9. Riots and enough strikes to scare the hell out of them.

That's about the only thing that spurred action during the last one, the fear that the riots would turn into an organized Communist revolution.

Sadly, the latter is about as far fetched as you can get right now, but the PTB do fear our getting our acts together enough to restart the unions and call things like national strikes. For all their boasting and posturing about "going Galt" and bringing the world to its knees, they know if they did, no one would notice. Labor, on the other hand, would bring things to a screeching halt with only a partially successful national strike.

Until and unless things get that ugly, they're going to keep trying to paste the house of cards together, secure in the knowledge that if it should ever fall, their soft gigs in this world are over and they're going to have to start to pay for what they've got.

[closeupready]

11. That's what I was going to post. When people get hungry, watch out.

That's when they get desperate, mad and go for broke. :scared:

[rhett o rick]

35. The problem is the USof A is not needed by the corporatists. They can let us dwindle until we are

like Haiti. When they get all the middle class money, they will let us die.

[Odin2005]

40. WIN! Thread over!

[old mark]

10. Rec - to no avail....It will take a long time, short of WWIII- it will be

years unless the GOP takes control - then it might take decades.


mark

[Stinky The Clown]

19. Not to worry

I have a fan club made up mostly of DU's elite Morons Against Truth corpsmen who follow me around and unrec anything I post. No one knows who they are because they never show themselves, only their handiwork.

Wave to them and smile. :)

:hi:

[PBS Poll-435]

13. Buck Eighty-Nine Gasoline.

$1.89 9/10ths / gallon nationwide.

[Stinky The Clown]

17. They're predicting we'll be close to that very soon

Well under $2,50 very soon, say the analysts.

[PBS Poll-435]

23. Glad to hear. That is more of a benefit to working families than a tax cut.

[Confusious]

38. You one of them there....

Pinko socialist com'unist fascist therapist Eur'opeans stinky?

We use a period in-between our numbers in 'merica.

[ThomWV]

14. When an FDR-type President is elected, and I don't see one anywhere on the horizon

[dkf]

15. Insolvency. Sigh.

[Stinky The Clown]

20. I think that possibility looms larger each day.

[sakabatou]

16. A New "New Deal"

Of course, with good pay, breaks and other amenities.

[CrispyQ]

18. The tequila with a handle built in the bottle.

My bad - you meant economic depression.

[liberal N proud]

21. The pessimist plague

It will wipe out millions of pessimists

[girl gone mad]

36. Actually, defensive pessimists tend to be strategically superior in all pursuits.

Optimists struggle because they lack awareness of their personal limitations. They rarely accept the role of luck, nepotism and good favor in their successes, instead attributing wins wholly to their own talent, ambition and intelligence.

I actually think that a lot of Obama's failures so far relate to his innate over-optimism. It's clear that on economic matters, the White House was not prepared when their best laid plans went awry, despite being warned by some very smart people that those plans were doomed. Upon parting, Romer admitted that the team had no clue why the economy didn't recover the way they had predicted. They just couldn't understand what was happening. This is a very typical example of the way in which excessive optimism leaves people ill-prepared. The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf is another very tragic example. Remember Obama's poorly timed pronouncement that deep water drilling was perfectly safe now? A defensive pessimist would never have reached such a silly conclusion.

[RainDog]

42. it's nearly impossible to be a public official in America and be honest or realitistic

There is so much magical thinking b.s. in the U.S. that is part of its religious past and present, especially. The voting public does not want to do the work of examining our problems and looking at solutions that have worked in the past, both here and in other democracies.

Not to mention that the 5% -ers use this idiocy to keep the serfs in line.

When anyone talks about social democratic reforms to make the lives of the majority of Americans less prone to fear b/c of some unforeseeable health or financial crisis - well, we're not that other nation that performs so much better by enacting those same policies - so we have to soldier on with a shitty health care system and the myth of the free market.

But we can pray for prosperity - even tho there is abso-fucking-lutely NOTHING in the teachings of jesus that says to use god as a lottery ticket.

The myth of the self-made "man" is another toothless wonder of American life. We saw that one in spades with the stage-managed BULLSHIT when Shrub did his cock walk to freedom to celebrate the end of the criminal war that... oops, wasn't quite over. The grooming among the beta males for their imaginary victory honestly made me want to retch.

We see it in our politicians' refusal to hold the Bush administration accountable for crimes against humanity - who wants to be reminded of the past - we might have to be responsible for our irrational actions if we did that.

girl, don't be a debbie downer! this is the USA. we like our politics dumb and pregnant with possibility.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. WW II did NOT end the Great Depression

in fact it led to the recession of 1948, that by all figures was a depression (But with so many folks in college due to the GI bill...)

That is a right wing talking point used to discredit the New Deal.

What will it end it? The end of these wars, and true keynseian spending... neither of these is coming in the near future.

Oh and it is not a depression YET...

I like to be technical about it, sorry.

[RainDog]

39. what are the parameters for an economic depression?

I've seen some economists call it already - how are the definitions parsed?

[nadinbrzezinski]

41. The number of consecutive quarters wtih little or no GNP growth

three in fact. We are getting close... we were DAMN CLOSE but the stim worked.

That is why some economists are already daring to call it. Because the data is getting there.

One more quarter of revision down and we will mostly be there.

[Radical Activist]

44. I'm glad someone poitned this out before I did.

[rucky]

24. Cheap renewable energy.

[InvisibleTouch]

25. Green technology and renewable energy.

And some related set of innovations and new inventions that spur people to spend again. Items that allow people to have a good life without ruining the planet and without relying on obsolete fossil fuels.

[Ruby the Liberal]

27. The rapture?

[Davis_X_Machina]

28. We already know...

...don't we?

Legalizing dope and the ownership of machine guns, together with the prohibition of organized religion and vaccination.

You'd be surprised what you can learn by reading DU.

[unblock]

29. strictly speaking, economists will consider the contraction to have ended in the middle of 2009

and they will largely give credit for that to obama's stimulus plan passed in february.

yes, this is technical and all, because economists think in terms of contraction and expansion, not absolute levels. similarly, economist don't recognize the term "the great depression"; they do recognize the "great contraction" and date it 1929-1933, ending right about the time fdr took office.

i understand fully that there was plenty of misery post 1933, as i understand there is plenty of misery post mid-2009. but economists think in terms of contraction and expansion in part because there's no clear definition of "out of the depression". how much expansion do we need before we're "there yet"?

in any event, there won't be any one event that defines the exit from this morass. instead, it will likely be a long, slow crawl towards more employment. but frankly, i don't expect wages and the position of the middle class to really ever "fully" recover. we're in increasing competition with EXTREMELY cheap foreigh labor, and that's not likely to change.

[L0oniX]

30. Jeb Bush gets elected via corrupt voting machines. The End!

[Juche]

31. I don't think the depression ended due to the war

The depression was mostly gone by the end of the 30s, that is my impression.

So are we looking at the same thing, a slow 10 year recovery period? I don't know. I hope not, but probably.

If we need a massive 'shock' to the system then reforming our economy to make it sustainable could do that. Our energy and manufacturing are not sustainable over the long term, and require trillions in investments to turn them around.

Plus there will likely be a labor shortage in 10 years. The reason is that tons of boomers will retire, opening up their jobs and soon we will go from a surplus to shortage of workers in the west and in China.

[hunter]

32. The Great Millenial Depopulation.

Bring out your dead!

[tridim]

33. A big Stem cell therapy breakthrough.

And the beginning of a major energy revolution, maybe with fusion power.

[rhett o rick]

34. Define prosperity. nm

[stuntcat]

37. flooding, fires, spills/leaks/explosions

(just wishing they'd happen sooner rather than later so the planet will get a re-do)

[Radical Activist]

43. The transition to a green energy economy.

[McCamy Taylor]

45. Anything that makes a virtue of self sacrifice and working together towards a common goal.

War brought the nation together in the late 1930s. However, it does not have to be war. The difference between 1932 and 1940 was when you did not have sugar or meat to eat in 1940 it was because you were supporting the troops. When you had to go to work in 1940 (as a soldier) instead of going to college, it was to defend our country. The public works projects that everyone knew did not really matter became weapons works projects that did matter.


Apathy, despair and every man for himself will keep the depression going. Any sort of communal effort will end it. Certain long term supporters of corporate fascism are hoping that a fascist movement will unite the country. However, Americans are, by nature, fiercely individualistic. Each wave of immigrants reinforces the individualism. You have to be pretty sure of yourself and your own abilities to leave your own country to start fresh in the US. You have to be the kind of person who is willing to try new things. You can not be wedded to tradition.

It does not have to be war. Any challenge---an epidemic, catestrophic weather from global warming---could do it. The fascists keep trying to convince us that there is an external enemy against whom we must unite. However, I think most Americans sense that we are our own worst enemies right now.

I am putting my money on the environment as the next unifying cause. I think Katrina was just the start. A few more of those and people will have focus again. What turned the nation against Bush? Katrina. What will turn it against the corporations? More Katrinas---which people like the Koch Brothers are busy creating with their oil. Consider that the US fascists who supported Nazi Germany and Mussolini ended up shifting the US (permanantly) to the left. The Kochs may do the same thing, inadvertantly.

[McCamy Taylor]

46. Alternately, manufacturing could seize the reins back from oil/banking.

Manufacturing creates jobs and it relies on a healthy consumer class. Under Bush, banking (and health insurance which is basically banking) and oil got all the marbles. The economy became lopsided. What is good for JPMorgan is not good for GE. What is good for Exxon is not good for any retail outlet in the country that has to ship merchandise.

Corporate America is not united. It is more like the Warring States period in China or England during the War of the Roses. Or maybe good old fashioned Japanese feudalism before the Tokugawa Shogunate. Right now, manufacturing has their man in the White House. Big Oil (the Kochs) wants back in the saddle again.

WWII created a gazillion manufacturing jobs. And prepared America to make a whole lot of stuff even after the war. And gave them money (the GI bill) to purchase it.