The only thing that isn't depressing is the Purchasing Manager's Index. That seems to show a bottom may be at hand. But everything else is still diving headlong for a not-yet-found bottom...
I never thought I would live to see a world-wide depression. My father, a child of the Great Depression, constantly feared a recurrence (and lived just long enough to see himself lose 5% in October 2008 on his "insured" AAA municipal bonds). I believe that shock killed him.
I naively assumed that economists and policy makers had learned the necessary lessons. But it is very clear to me know that even a smart guy like Obama somehow is afraid of Republican ideologues, is lost shadow boxing, and hasn't yet landed a punch. The "lost decade" of Japan is looking more and more like a reality.
I just don't understand why this is being allowed to happen. I remember the jokes a couple of years ago about "helicopter Ben". Ben Bernanke had let it be known during the deflation scare of 2002/3 that he wouldn't let the US slip into the Japanese illness. Instead he talked of just dropping cash out of helicopters to get money moving in the economy. Well... we need those helicopters and I don't hear Ben Bernanke making the same noises. What has silenced him? Keynes would have approved of the helicopter dump, or digging holes and filling them in, anything to spread money in a panicked economy.
But instead of ways to get money moving, you hear Obama talking about "finding ways to eliminate waste from the budget". You see half measures on getting the banks solvent. You see Republicans acting as bull-headed crazy as they did in the 1930s blocking any actions to get the economy moving. If you had told me this is what I would see in 2009 just a year or two ago I would have told you that you were crazy! It just couldn't be. But the nightmare is here...
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