Great Depression questions resurface amid current economic conditions, just as they have during other downturns, Chicago Tribune declared as of 03/24/07

Fears resurface amid latest turmoil, as they have during previous downturns, but parallels are few and regulation has changed… (but further we read)…. HOLC took over 1 million mortgages in default starting in 1933, worked to keep the owners in their homes and made new loans to strapped mortgage holders. When the agency was finally liquidated in 1951, it even returned a small profit to the U.S. Treasury….

So if the regulations have changed, how can we repeat the same mistakes over and over? This example above should worry you very much…
Take the NyTimes which last weekend ran the following headline: Debt-Gorged British Start to Worry That the Party Is Ending

As the United States economy weakens, many Americans are being overwhelmed by personal debt, but Britons are even more profligate. For most of the last decade, consumers here went on a debt-financed spending spree that made them the most indebted rich nation in the world, racking up a record £1.4 trillion in debt ($2.8 trillion) — more than the country’s gross domestic product. By comparison, personal debt in the United States is $13.8 trillion, including mortgage debt, slightly less than the country’s $14 trillion G.D.P.

What happens when the taxpayers have more debts than the GDP? How can they expect to pay them back? It would be also useful to mention that the savings rate in America was 2% negative at the end of 2006.
But Congress should be very carfeful, the American people are not fooled so easily. Now they have the internet to get the ‘real news”. Interestingly, the poll results published in the USAToday illustrated this very well:
Asked if the nation could slip into a depression lasting several years, 59% said it was likely, and 79% said they were worried about it. A recession is an economic downturn that usually lasts at least six months; a depression is longer, deeper and more broadly dispersed… (03/18)
There were more economic depression related headlines out there, such as:
In the guardian.uk - A transatlantic flight into fear … As the crunch breaks bones on Wall Street and in the… Square Mile, Observer writers take the fevered temperature of the masters of the universe and the minions who know only the state can save them now…
In the NYTimes again - Depression, You Say? Check Those Safety Nets. … Well, the economists are here to say that you can dig up the family silver and stop training the kids how to jump onto a moving train. While many who study the nation’s economic health agree that a recession has probably already begun, and that it may be long and severe, they also say the odds of a full-blown depression are almost nonexistent….
In the MercuryNews - The Great Depression couldn’t happen again, could it? … Dysfunctional capital markets, frantic central banks, stressed-out consumers, fear and uncertainty - all these are alarming echoes of the global economic cataclysm of the 1930s. Which raises the inevitable question: Could another Great Depression be lurking over the horizon?…
In the Times.uk - Remembrance of grim times past … IF you can keep your head while others are losing theirs, better not shout about it in today’s environment. What would Rudyard Kipling have made of a frenzy that has
taken us from the possibility of recession to a rerun of the Great Depression in days? We should treat talk of another Great Depression with a similar pinch of salt as when it was predicted after the 1998 global financial crisis and the September 11 attacks on America in 2001. But if those who ignore the lessons of history are condemned to repeat mistakes, nobody knows better than Fed chairman Ben Bernanke the lessons of the Great Depression era - you do not allow the banking system to implode and compound the problem with a protectionist trade war. Even if the historical parallels were appropriate,
which I think they are not, the lessons have been learnt…

Who is wrong… who is right, would you ask?

Although many people perceive capitalism as the root cause, it is about time to stop socialist bailouts in order to really understand what is really going on. The absolute is that no law can fix a “failure to deliver”. Politicians and monetary scientists have spent centuries to make us believe in their magic tricks. Meanwhile, the US dollar is headed for a deep bottom and that’s the reality.

If you are in a philosophical mood, we definitely recommend The Fable Of The Deserted island

.. Whether your deserted island is your college dorm room, a transnational megacorporation, an apartment in a big city, your automobile, a wide-bodied jet, your television set, your personal computer, or an Internet blog, there is but one fundamental question: “How can I die happy?” Your answer will determine how you live and whether or not your life has meaning…