Why We Need a "Good" Depression Now – Not a "Great" Depression Later!

Do not raise the debt-ceiling. You heard me: block the debt ceiling vote. Don’t raise it. America’s out-of-control, a debt addict. It is time to detox – to deal with the collateral damage [now] before it’s too late. We need to fix America’s looming credit default, failing economy and our screwed-up banking system now – with a Good Depression. If we just kick the can down the road one more time, we’ll be trapped into repeating our 1930’s tragedy – a second Great Depression. [Let me explain.] Words: 1422

So says Paul B. Farrell (www.marketwatch.com)  in edited excerpts from an article* which Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.munKNEE.com (It’s all about Money!), has further edited ([  ]), abridged (…) and reformatted below  for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read. Please note that this paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement. Farrell goes on to say:

Yes, depression. Spelled: d-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n. Wake up America, recessions do not work – and will not work in the future.

• Remember that 30-month recession after the dot-com crash? It didn’t work. Why? Because in the decade since that 2000 peak, Wall Street’s lost an inflation–adjusted 20% of America’s retirement money.
• Remember the so-called Great Recession of the 2008 credit meltdown? It didn’t work either. In fact, it made matters worse: Wall Street got richer by stealing from the other 98% of Americans, the middle class, and the poor. Now their conservative puppets in Washington want to make matters worse, widening the wealth gap further to benefit the Super Rich.

Seems nobody really gives a damn about our great nation any more. America’s now a capitalists anarchy: “Every (rich) man for himself.” Proxy battles are fought by high-priced lobbyists in a broken political system. America needs a 21-gun wake-up call. Yes, that’s why America needs a Good Depression. The economy’s bad now – but kicking the can down the road again will make matters much worse later…

Wall Street, Washington and Corporate America are focused on one narrow-minded short-term strategy: economic growth, bull markets, megabonuses and tax cuts. In good times they tout “free markets” but when greed bombs they throw free-market “principles” under the Reagan Revolution bus and unleash their mercenary lobbyists to go whining to Congress for huge taxpayer bailouts and access at the Fed discount window, to siphon off more taxpayer money – and they’ll do it again soon.

Wall Street and their cronies are doing such a miserable job, America needs a new strategy: stop “kicking the can down the road.” Let a good old-fashioned Good Depression do the job that our hapless, happy-talking leaders refuse to do. Take our medicine. Let a new depression clean house and reawaken Americans to core values. Trust me folks, it’s either a Good Depression now … or a Great Depression 2 [later].

Here are seven reasons favoring the do-it-now strategy:

1. Capitalism is now a lethal soul sickness [that] needs a reawakening

The real problem is not the economy, not markets, nor even politics. Yes, our economic pains are real but they are just symptoms. Something is structurally wrong. Since 2000 [we have had] endless bad news: greed, deceit, stupidity, corruption, unethical behavior, lack of moral conscience.

The real problem’s deep in our character, the “mutant capitalism” Jack Bogle warned of in “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism.” Sadly, that battle was lost. With it we [have] lost our soul, our moral compass. America’s character is measured by our net worth.

2. We are already in the early stages of a Great Depression

Comparing today with the Great Depression is common sport. In a Newsweek special “Seeing Shades of the 1930s,” Dan Gross wrote:

“Wall Street, after two terms of a business-friendly Republican president, self-immolated on a pyre of greed, incompetence and excessive optimism.” Today’s “new normal” economy means high unemployment for years, inflation driving prices, rising interest rates, more debt, chaos.

We are destroying ourselves from within. Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker warns that:

“There are striking similarities between America’s current situation and that of another great power from the past: Rome.”  Three reasons “worth remembering: declining moral values and political civility at home, an overconfident and overextended military in foreign lands, and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government.” We are becoming more vulnerable to external enemies.

3. A Good Depression [would] expose our self-destruct bubble-thinking

Before the 2008 crash, “Irrational Exuberance” author Robert Shiller warned in the Atlantic magazine that:

 “Bubbles are primarily social phenomena. Until we understand and address the psychology that fuels them, they’re going to keep forming.” Housing inflated 85% in the decade: “Historically unprecedented … no rational basis for it….We recently lived through two epidemics of excessive financial optimism … we are close to a third episode.”

4. A Good Depression [would] stir outrage and force real reforms

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jim Grant, editor of the Interest Rate Observer, wrote:

“Why No Outrage? Through history, outrageous financial behavior has been met with outrage but today Wall Street’s damaging recklessness has been met with near-silence, from a too tolerant populace.” Grant worries that Wall Street will run “itself and the rest of the American financial system right over a cliff.”

We only went to the edge [of the cliff] in 2008… Three years ago we did not have Tea Party, union fights, the Arab Spring and Greek austerity riots, all signs of a dark angry future sweeping across America.

5. A Good Depression [would] force Wall Street to think outside the box

In a powerful Bloomberg Markets feature, “No Easy Fix,” we are told:

Wall Street’s “profit formula has hit a wall.” Their “money-making machine is broken and efforts to repair it after the biggest losses in history are likely to undermine profits.”

Even Mad Money’s Jim Cramer openly admits that: 

Hedge fund managers are pocketing megaprofits at capital gains rates while laughing at the stupidity of a broken political system that gives hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the richest, then takes taxes off the table as our middle class is dying under massive unsustainable deficits. Soon angry mobs will “fix” Wall Street.

6. A Good Depression [would] deflate America’s warring soul

The American economy is a “war economy” driven by a egomaniac. I saw it firsthand as a U.S. Marine. Americans love being king of the hill, world’s cop, the global superpower. Why else spend 54% of our tax dollars on a war machine, 47% of the world’s total military budgets.

Why? Naomi Klein in “Shock Doctrine”warns that:

Our war machine generates such “spectacular profits that many people around the world” are convinced America’s “rich and powerful must be deliberately causing catastrophes so that they can exploit them.”

No wonder the GOP takes military spending, like tax cuts for the rich, off-the-table: The war industry is a major political donor.

7. A Good Depression now [would] avoid a far bigger depression later

In “The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars,” Robert Hormats, undersecretary of state and a former Goldman Sachs vice chairman, traces America’s wartime financing from the Revolutionary War to present wars. He warns that:

Today we are “relying on faith over experience, hoping that sustained growth will erase deficits and that the ballooning costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be manageable in the coming decades without difficult reforms.”

Kevin Phillips, Nixon strategist and author of “Wealth & Democracy” writes that absent a brutal reset, we are on a historically predictable course saying:

“Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out.”

Yes, burned out, unprepared.

Conclusion

[Given the above] pray for a Good Depression earlier rather than later. Choose now and we can be prepared for whatever comes – or a Great Depression will hit later when we are least prepared [when] the problems [are] bigger [and] our faith [is] weaker. [I repeat:] don’t raise the debt ceiling.

*Original Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/7-reasons-us-needs-a-good-depression-now-2011-07-05?pagenumber=2

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Editor’s Note:

1. The above article consists of reformatted edited excerpts from the original for the sake of brevity, clarity and to ensure a fast and easy read. The author’s views and conclusions are unaltered.
2. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given as per paragraph 2 above