A modern depression

By Kleinheider Posted on March 30, 2009 at 8:43 am

Justin Lahart discusses what one might look like:

The different structure of today’s economy means that a modern depression would differ from the Great Depression of the 1930s. Fewer than 2% of Americans working today have agricultural jobs, compared with one in five in 1930. Three-quarters of today’s workers are in service-related jobs, which tend to be more stable than manufacturing, compared with fewer than half in 1930.

And then there are the social-safety-net programs that emerged after the Great Depression to blunt the blows. “There were no unemployment insurance, no food stamps, none of the automatic things that maintain some income for people who are out of work,” says former Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate. Mr. Solow, 84, grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and remembers his parents’ constant worry about the next month’s money.

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Tags: depressing comparisons, economy, recession  

Keeping a little perspective

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on February 10, 2009 at 9:43 pm

Tom Brown doesn’t like the latest political fad of talking down the economy.

For the record, the recession so far isn’t even as bad as the one that occurred in 1981, let alone as bad as the Great Depression. Yet the President flatly states that unless Congress passes his vast stew of a bill, the country will enter a period of permanent economic decline.

And for those folks cavalierly tossing around the word ‘depression,’ here’s a stat: Unemployment in the United States was still at 15 percent in 1940.

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Tags: Bankstocks.com, depressing comparisons, economy, employment, government stimulus