See, this is when I am really resentful that Prag is not here, I know he would have tons to say about this article. What do you guys think... are we headed for another Depression? There are safeguards to prevent what happened in the 30's. The problem is that there are so many new financial tools that are NOT protected by FDIC and insurance. These are the ones that could be our achilles heel. So what now?

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TXDem, I was born during the DEPRESSION in 1936------I hope I don't die in the coming DEPRESSION. I miss Dr.Bill prag, also. He predicted that I would lose money living in Hungary because of the failing dollar. It has dropped in value 56 times since BUSH/REPUBLICAN PARTY TOOK OVER. His posts were indeed INSIGHTFUL.

I believe we should tap our GOLD in FT.KNOX to cover SOCIAL SECURITY/MEDICARE/TRADE DEFICITS. When NIXON went off the GOLD STANDARD. a troy ounce of GOLD was set at $32. Today, GOLD is selling at $738 an oz.

Do you think that all these massive federal bailouts of these failing companies are contributing to the economic problems?

I don't think we're in a depression. I think the economy just blows right now. I think the spoiled people of America have no idea what a real depression is and what sacrificing really means.

I actually agree with April on this one.

Oh yeh, it's not that bad.

Don't worry about it.

Back in the 30's most people lived on farms and could make do by doing without and sharing what they had with others but we became an industrialized nation and people cannot just grow a bigger garden to survive. We need good jobs and people need to have a way to buy a house and save for the future.

You want good jobs?

Too bad your environmentalists have stuck it to the capitalists so they now do business in less enlightened parts of the world rather than here in our back yard.

You can't have it both ways. I thought you were for science and the environment. Yet you are for every working sap to have a good union job.

Too late, you liberals pissed it away.

ThatsSuperBlonde2U:

I don't think we're in a depression. I think the economy just blows right now. I think the spoiled people of America have no idea what a real depression is and what sacrificing really means.

Oh I completely agree with that, Americans still have no concept of sacrifice. I think what the article was getting at is that while we are not in a Depression yet (and I don't think you will find any economist who would say that we are in one right now), but that if things continue the way they are that we could be headed down that path.

What is frightening to me is the idea that things are degenerating so quickly. A year ago we would have laughed at the idea that we could be headed for another Depression, but now? Now even the Feds are considering that possiblity. Even agencies who survived the Depression, like Merrill Lynch, have had to close because the financial landscape is just so different than it was. The programs that came out of the New Deal can't help them. I'm just glad I am no longer in the banking industry.

I'm not sure I understand enough about economics to say whether or not the government bailouts are a good thing or not, but I know something has to be done. We need another president who can do an effective "100 Days" and I'm not sure that McCain or Obama is that guy.

Tex, hope you get this. I occasionally check the site to see what is going on. Sorry I bombed out, but with a few exceptions like you, Rob1 and one or two others, I got distusted with the few but truly ignorant and/or abusive idiots who were dominating the site, as well as a general degeneration into petty chit-chat and not real stuff of politics and economics.

The extraordinary crisis in US and world financial markets seems to have attracted the attention of at least some of the more insightful and intelligent members of the Fray, as well as at least one abusive and ignorant fool, not DrBill.

I'll read your article and get back to you and DrBill shortly via a separate post. I'll also get back to Rob1, who seems to be jousting about vet's rights with a truly naive and ignorant Unebug, or is that Unibug? It's a handle worth forgetting.

As for the site's ignoramuses, I'll trash their asses if they try to put their bull shit crap into the threads of any of my posts. They are NOT welcome in any thread in which I choose to participate. Let them spout their ignorant crap elsewhere, because it pisses me off incredibly because they are wrong, wrong, and wrong. Too bad we let shit like them vote.

Truly naieve and ignorant unebug?

But hey she was with you against the war, and with you on amnesty. Just becase she is retarded, you think some how there is a big difference between the two?

Oh there is, just not as much as you would like to believe.

While you were away you didn't opine on your other bed fellow in your anti-war crusade.

The Russians.

Yep Unebug, Prag, the Russians, France (some people speak french around here), and Red China all in a daisy chain.

It's nice to see the alzheimers isn't that bad. Welcome back comrade!

Abusive, that is actually comical coming from you. A guy who repeatedly wants to keep people from voting. Not the first time you said it.

I wouldn't do that, I might advocate stringing someone up or feeding them to fish, but I would never, never, never keep someone from voting.

Nope that is someone else's trademark. Just like amnesty and the war.

Don't get your hopes up, or your disgust as it may be, that I'll be very active in the future :-) The interests of Cagle have inexorably drifted away from my interests so there's not really much use posting. Also, I've been consumed lately by a true obsession with following the incredible string of financial disasters and market gyrations of the past month or so. Become a CNBC junky.

To answer Tex, yes, this is the greatest US housing and financial disaster since the Great Depression and it ain't over by a long shot. The real question now is how it will affect the rest of the economy --- jobs/unemployment, inflation/deflation, taxes, deficit spending, GDP, and personal and corporate debt markets. I'm worried that the malaise may spread to credit card debt and to things like auto loans. Jeeze, the money market funds damn near puked and died last week, and that would have damaged the savings tens of millions people, my household included.

I apologize to unrbug. I violated a little rule of mine by naming a 3rd party negatively by name --- someone with whom I was not sparring at the time.

As for voting, this may make me some sort of Facist, but I firmly believe in two tests before someone can vote. First, they must demonstrate at least a 10th grade level of understanding spoken and written English. That way, they can become informed if they so choose. Second, they must make an effort to become informed. They must periodically pass a civics and current affairs test, say every 4 years before a Presidential election. IMHO, one of the great dangers of Democracy is that it allows totally uninformed people to vote.

As for Alzheimer's, my mother had it gradually coming on about the last 20 years of her life. By the time she died, she was a demented vegetable. What made it worse was that her doctors knew that she had it but couldn't inform the rest of the family due to doctor-patient confidentiality. We just thought her behavior was laziness and irrational anger. She would have been a lot easier to love and accept if we had known that she had a serious organic disease. I hope to God that my brother, sister, and I are spared her agony.

Why should you be spared anything the way you go around judging people and situations so harshly. We live in a diverse world and you are just part of it.

Who has been screaming about the Fascist way this government has moved in the last 10 or 20 years. I told you so......

McCain does not apologize for the deregulation mess he and his Phil Graham caused in the bankking industry. I heard him say it helped the economy today. Sick a 700 billion dollars problem and think of all the suffering and loss that has happened to hard working workers whose jobs went to China. Capitalism. I told you so. Welcome back any time and speak your mind; we all need to be educated. Have you read any of Kevin Phillips? This financial mess was not an accident like a hurricane; it has been predicted by many.

If I deserve anything, it's someone else's harsh judgement, not Alzheimer's disease. I wouldn't wish that on anyone at this site or anyone whom I remotely care about, though I do know a few sociopaths I worked for and a number of politicians who are so evil that they deserve it.

As for harsh judgements, mea culpa. I think that about 1/2 of my middle- and upper-middle-class neighbors are freaking incompent idiots who can't see beyoned the ends of their noses. If I feel that way about relatively well-educated people, then you can pretty easily guess what I think about most of the rest of the people in the USA.

I've thought the US Govt Fascist ever since I saw its reaction to 9/11 and the subsequent embracement of Pakistan and the invasion of Iraq (but not Afghanistan, which needed to have the Taliban ousted). When I, a Republican, voted for Gore in 2000, I thought Bush an idiot but not a Facist. I still think that way about him, but he has done a remarkable job of surrounding himself with worthy Fascists like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Wolfowicz (sp?), and that idiot whom he appointed as our UN ambassador for a while.

I pretty much agree on the origin of our pesent financial mess. It started with the formation of the RTC and the resolution of the S&L Crisis. It got far worse when Bush was elected and he appointed lassaiz-faire people like Chris Cox to keep an eye on Wall Street and the financial institutions. It also was driven by the enormous increase in hedge funds and similar activity by main-stream financials, the creation of enormous markets for extremely complex financial derivatives, and instantaneous computerized trading that destabilized a market system that was designed for slow, human-to-human trading. Wall Street's business model has been broken by hedging, derivatives, and computerized trading, and it needs to be re-invented and re-regulated.

I'm glad you're back prag. Even tho i don't always reply i more often than not read and appreciate what you post.