The depression may have started today.
Depression is short hand and state of mind, as well as economic condition. Such short hand and state of mind undoubtedly helps create the economic condition.
My father, a child of the Depression, would say during downturns that followed, we no longer have depressions, we have recessions. A depression was an archaic condition like tuberculosis, or an historic exception, like Hitler—if you have any sense of perspective, you don’t make light reference.
True, as the current economic mess began earlier this fall, there have been a lot of “not since the 1930s” qualifiers.
But that’s been to indicate gravity (it also indicated skimpy analysis), not equivalency.
Then a few weeks ago, I started to hear a new locution, “this recession-depression,” which, I do admit, was a little scarier than a mere recession.
Then, the markets kept falling—and falling.
“Where the credit markets are trading, it’s all but implying a 1929 scenario,” the Times this morning quotes an analyst saying.
The S&P 500 fell more than 6% in two days, “something that had not happened,” according to the Times, “since July 20 and 21, 1933.”
“This is in response to real fear,” the Times has a money manager saying. “We each have to look inside and say, is the fear warranted?”
Which is basically as close as it comes to saying we’ve nothing to fear but fear itself. The word, depression, is getting real.
