I maintain that we are in a depression. A depression takes a long time to unwind as the deleveraging process creeps along. You can’t tell a depression when you are in it, only in hindsight, but the signs indicated to me that we are in a depression.
My only question is if the MASSIVE new Federal debt spending enough to create some new bubble that puts the heart of the depression off until some years from now, rather than continuing through it now. I know the government is trying to put the depression off, I just have no clue if they will succeed, so I will give them credit for the possibility of putting it off, and of course making it far worse with the new added MASSIVE debt.
I’m convinced we are in a depression and unemployment will only go up from here, and drag out longer while the economy stagnates.
The economy won't recover for real until it is self sustaining. I know that unemployment is a "trailing indicator", but growth resulting from borrowing and printing to pay for unemployment benefits and temporary jobs won't hold up indefinitely. At some point we have to switch from borrowing money to pay for jobs to having jobs to pay back what we've borrowed, or we're only delaying an inevitable collapse.