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Old 11-10-2008, 04:29 PM   #14
historycircus
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Default Re: Worse than the Great Depression

A quick note on the unemployment numbers:

Keep in mind that when the stock market crashed in October of 1929, it took years for the effects to manifest as a social low - the winter of 1932-33 was lovingly called the "Winter of Despair." That is when the zeinith of Depression was felt by most of the masses.

As for unemployment, the official census numbers that are used today show a 25-30% national uneployment rate for the winter of 1932-33. This percentage only lasted a month or two, and steadily declined thereafter (after FDR's "Second New Deal"). Secondly, as that only represents the national average, there were regional pockets of unemployment that hovered around 50-60%, and a few that hit 80%. When the stock market crash, credit crunch, and banking failures hit in the early 1930s, the average citizen didn't feel much pain. Then one day, they got up, went to work, and found the place locked - and if their next stop was the bank, it was either closed or out of money. With that said, the numbers we see today associated with the current crisis are nowhere near what they were during the Great Depression. That is not to say, however, that they could not quickly approach them - which sadly, IS the statistical trend.

I think unemployment is the key stat. Remember, two, three years ago, the mainstream media made a big deal about 1/10 of a percent increases and decreases in an unemployment rate that had been hovering around 5%. A few years later, and the national average is now rocketing toward 10% (and has passed it in regional pockets). My own guess - I can't see the future and have used no mystical powers, this is just a guestimation - is that over the next 4-6 months, if the national unemployment rate moves past 10%, and quickly, we will see a repeat of the Great Depression. We simply are not creating jobs in this nation, and we're losing, what, 200-300 thousand jobs a month now? If this number does not stabilize, the grandparents who saved every scrap of metal, every grocery bag, and every reciept will become a whole heckuva' lot more understandable by all of us.
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