All the Talk of a Depression Is ... Depressing

By Danny Schechter, AlterNet. Posted November 26, 2008.

Behind it, a crisis of real economy is standing out, since the financial drift was continuously asphyxiating the growth of the production basis. Solutions brought to the financial crisis can just lead to a crisis of the real economy, i.e. a relative stagnation of the production with its side effects: regression of wages, growth of unemployment, growing precariousness and aggravation of poverty in the Southern countries. We must speak now about depression and no more about recession.

And some are suggesting, not to scare us, that a depression is already here, depressing as that might sound, and hitting some parts of the country hard.

Here are twenty indicators that could lead us ever downward, from Paul Ferrell, who called the dot com crash that so many experts did not see coming:

1. America's credit rating may soon be downgraded below AAA
2. Fed refusal to disclose $2 trillion loans, now the new "shadow banking system"
3. Congress has no oversight of $700 billion, and Paulson's Wall Street Trojan Horse
4. Henry Paulson flip-flops on plan to buy toxic bank assets, confusing markets
5. Goldman, Morgan lost tens of billions, but planning over $13 billion in bonuses this year
6. AIG bails big banks out of $150 billion in credit swaps, protects shareholders before taxpayers
7. American Express joins Goldman, Morgan as bank holding firms, looking for Fed money
8. Treasury sneaks corporate tax credits into bailout giveaway, shifts costs to states
9. State revenues down, taxes and debt up; hiring, spending, borrowing add even more debt
10. State, municipal, corporate pensions lost hundreds of billions on derivative swaps
11. Hedge funds: 610 in 1990, almost 10,000 now. Returns down 15%, liquidations up
12. Consumer debt way up, now at $2.5 trillion; next area for credit meltdowns
13. Fed also plans to provide billions to $3.6 trillion money-market fund industry
14. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are bleeding cash, want to tap taxpayer dollars
15. Washington manipulating data: War not $600 billion but estimates actually $3 trillion
16. Hidden costs of $700 billion bailout are likely $5 trillion; plus $1 trillion Street write-offs
17. Commodities down, resource exporters and currencies dropping, triggering a global meltdown
18. Big three automakers near bankruptcy; unions, workers, retirees will suffer
19. Corporate bond market, both junk and top-rated, slumps more than 25%
20. Retailers bankrupt: Circuit City, Sharper Image, Mervyns; mall sales in free fall

When you review these 20 developments -- and there are far more -- you have to ask yourself, realistically, what can an Obama Administration do about this multi-faceted disaster? Can token reforms by government stem the tide and solve systemic problems?

Are we expecting too much from our politicians?

Just thinking about all this leads to another kind of depression -- a personal bummer at a time when so many of want to feel good about the change that is said to be coming to America. At the same time, we know that joyous events can be followed by awful letdowns -- some women go through childbirth experience post-partum depression, for example, because of hormonal changes. In their case, joy turns to sadness.

The first step avoid being disillusioned is abandon illusions and recognize this is a "system problem." Am I wrong?

See more stories tagged with: obama, depression, financial crisis, cabinet, economic advisers

Danny Schechter writes a blog for MediaChannel.org. He is the author of "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq" (Prometheus).

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