Quote:
Originally Posted by BellinghamCrunchie 
It will be much worse. Some mainstream economists are calling it the second depression. Off-mainstream have been saying depression for a while.
To see why its different than a normal recession, you might enjoy taking Chris Martenson's Crash Course on economics. Its very interesting: http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
You can also just check out the business and economy sections of NPR or the New York Times or even CNN to get a feel for how bad things are likely to get. The media can be alarmist sometimes, but there's also a great deal of factual data presented from which you can draw your own conclusions.
Incidentally, the markets are tanking today. Might set a record. Dow is down 7.30% and there's still 8 minutes to go.
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Yipes! Thank you for the 411. I'm very curious about it. It has hit my family to some degree. My parents have lost nearly half of their retirement this past year, and my husband isn't doing much better that way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lolar2
The economy as a whole is presently worse than the past few years, but in your locality it may not be. Remember some people got and/ or stayed rich during the Great Depression! And/ or did fine, not rich and not poor. So the micro-economy of a given family, or a given city or a given business, will not necessarily reflect the national economy.
I think most economists are projecting a worse recession than the one right after 9/11, for the country as a whole (again-- not necessarily everyone will feel it as worse, nor all at the same time). I've seen speculation about its being like the US recession of the early 1980s, which apparently was quite bad (I was a small child in Hungary at the time, so I have no direct memories). If it becomes a depression, that does not make it the "second" depression because (1) there is actually no official definition of depression, although it's generally thought of as a long recession with high unemployment, and (2) we have had more than one depression in the history of the US. The Great Depression was the worst and longest, but there is a lot of room between Great Depression and ordinary recession-- there are bad recessions and mild to moderate depressions.
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Hmmm... I'm going to have to keep an eye on things... Our economy was very scary over here during 9/11-possibly bc we are so near DC. At the time I was working for aviation and technology publisher who had just sold their company to new owners. Within less than a year, our location whittled down to half it's size (300+ people to 150 people). It was so traumatic! People were scared, and it brought out the worst in them. It was like seeing a closely knit family tear itself apart.
Supposedly, Maryland is better off than a lot of the rest of the country, but I see things going down. I saw it happening again at the current company I work for. I was a permanent employee for over a year... But I took a paycut to contract from home to save on gas and avoid some the the politics going down. I'm worried I won't have a job to come back to after we have the baby (thank goodness for temp agents).
This year, my husband and I have been attempting to tighten our belts since we're expecting our first. We do okay financially (though I confess I have a spending problem), but it scares me what could be coming down the road in the future. There has been so much damage done in regards to rising housing costs, dying banks and so many people being in debt. So much is going to be so much change, and I believe it will get worse before better.
About a month ago, I saw a family in our neighborhood lose their home. It was terrible, bc I knew the little girl, and she was such a sweet kid. She had to lose her puppy since they moved into apartments, and being displaced meant she lost all her friends...plus she had the weight of the world on her shoulders worrying about what was going to happen. She was only 8. We live in a growing (or what was once growing) suburb so this was unexpected.
