Great post, and timely, as I’ve been needing an update on this.
I will say it for the 100th time here. The signifying characteristic of this downturn that really most distinguishes it as a depression and not a recession, is the duration of unemployment. People fired and dumped are just not getting re-hired. They are living off savings, selling assets or others.
We are in a depression folks. I don’t think there is any getting around it.
We are starting to learn the cost of a couple of decades of outsourcing and deindustrializing the country. In previous eras stimulating the economy would put Americans to work. Now it puts people to work, they just don’t happen to live here.