Great Depression

With unemployment at 8.5 percent, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich finally called it:
This is still not the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is a Depression.

Are we in a depression? Maybe so, if offhand remarks about the last one now require clarification. During Tim Pawlenty’s substitute-radio-host gig this afternoon on KKMS-AM, a Christian talk station, the governor asserted that religious institutions used to provide the nation’s social-service safety net but have abdicated that role to the government. He asked his [...]

Think it was mere chance that got Minneapolis a mention in President Obama’s address to Congress? It turns out that the select occasions in the past when Minnesota’s biggest city turned up in presidential addresses have always been during serious talk about tough times. In fact, it happened first during the first State of the Union [...]

As the Boston Globe offers a sobering reflection on what a 2009 depression might feel like, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls for the emergency swearing-in of Barack Obama, stating that stock and credit markets “have started to price financial stocks at Great Depression levels, not just recession levels.” The comparision between our current [...]

When a Minnesota bank becomes the nation’s fourth since December to fail (as happened Friday), and a Minnesota credit union gets hit with a cease-and-desist order from the state for being in the red (as happened in mid-May), it may be time to sew a wad of bills into a mattress, hide a bankroll under [...]

On the eve of the day of Great Fools, the Bush Administration has given the “Great Depression” its second major media debut. News outlets are bandying about the words this morning after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled what is being called the biggest overhaul of the financial services regulatory system since, well, the Great Depression.

Critics [...]