Second Great Depression?

[oldblueeyez 15475]

There are some real smart folks here, so I'm wondering, is the Second Great Depression ending, or is it just beginning? I don't include myself in the real smart folks here, but the Eurozone is in recession with some of its countries getting close to 30% unemployment, major US companies, including Walmart, are reporting slowing revenues, and the stock market is at an inexplicable record high.

 

Is something fishy, or is it just my smoked mackerel?

[Lowdark 5613]

I'm not an economist, but from I remember of my history, the Great Depression that tretched from 1929 to 1939 was actually a double dip recession, with four years of "recovery" in between. While Europe is causing concern abroad, the political paralysis in the U.S. is tempering their recovery and growth. As far as Wal-Mart goes though, they're dip in sales may also be a result of a bit of backlash in the U.S., as many people are unhappy about how poorly paid their employees are.

[Phaedrus 209521]

Who knows? It may be that the present anæmic recovery will continue, the Euro-folks will muddle through somehow, and we'll eventually get back to an economy that's creating jobs. Or the Euro could implode in spectacular style and what we've had for the last few years could start to look quite good by comparison. Your guess is probably as good as anyone else's...

[renegade 11027]

Markets are high as investors chase any return higher than the anemic rates they can get from interest and govt,s both here and arbroad try to create enough inflation to reduce the actual amounts they owe because they can't stop spending. The u.s.has been incredibly robust throughout history when recovering from recessions but this time it's different businesses are not buying into this recovery and unemployment is high globally especially among the young so it is different, govts can keep us from actually going into a depression but it stalls recovery - as rg would say a rambling !

[Capital Hunter 18263]

I don't think that we are in depression. Certainly not Canada. Yes it may be hard to get the first job for recent graduate and even for a small minority to hold on to their jobs but the 1.8% annual growth we were having past year and will have this year is hardly a depression as far as Canada is concerned and US is growing too with hundreds of thousands of jobs created down there last quarter alone. So as why the stock market in North America is very high. It always happens when the recession ends and future (not present) looks bright. 2014 is expected to be the magic year for 2.5%+ growth in North American economy unless things get real bad in Europe and drag us down again once more.

 

As for Europe, yes it is pretty bad over there and no end in sight for at least another couple of years. The reason was because a few corrupt governments mainly in Southern Europe kept spending beyond their means and then the Northern European countries and IMF started bailing them out with strict conditions on spending (sudden deep cuts) and then these cuts dragged them further into recession resulting in need for even more bail outs and demand for more cuts and more bail outs and more cuts .....and yes A VISIOUS CIRCLE. They didn't learn from past recessions and not only it didn't work for Southern Europe but it also dragged Northern Europe into recession too!!!!!!.

 

Still not as bad as a depression in the 30's (which by the way was caused by deep cuts in already bad economic times) when massive unemployment and inflation resulted in Fascist take over of part of Europe and the world war. Hopefully this recession in Europe will end before history repeats itself. The only way out of depression or deep recession is to borrow temporarily and spent on massive infrastructure programs (the right way) or create a war and spend massively on military hardware (the wrong way) not to cut and cut and cut in bad economic times and create the well known vicious (downturn) economic circle.