FOLKS...Welcome to the New ERA Depression.....

[rsmith6621]

....A Controlled Depression that is.....YES we are in Depression deep and will be until those we have bailed out pay back the bail or our Great Grand children pay it off..

[adarling]

1. I am 25

and i will be paying this off for the rest of my life...i am ready to move to Italy and be done with it. love my country but this is ridiculous

[Crazy Dave]

2. And that's going to be tough for them making minimum wage

And that's if there's going to be enough fast food, Wal-mart and Home Depot jobs left for them in 20 years

[progressivebydesign]

3. I often wonder if people here ever learned about the real Depression?

Yeah this financial crisis is bad, but I'm not going to be sitting around posting things about a Depression (talk you your relatives about the real Depression and what that was like.) It would really help if people researched the Big Depression to understand what they're talking about... you have to truly grasp what it was like in order to casually toss out all these subject lines about this being a Depression.

There is wealth all around us, and though many people are having a harder time, it's nothing compared to a real depression. I think it's a financial system crisis coupled with a potential recession. The chickens of deregulation have come home to roost, and had Bush and McCain and the PNAC not spent and borrowed BILLIONS every month for that goddamn war in Iraq, then this would not be so acute.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. But they DID spend and borrow billions, so all that seeming wealth

you see is mere illusion. The REAL unemployment figures are around 15% - the figures we see don't include millions of homeless (they're just "discouraged workers"), and there are millions more who, if not for food stamps and food banks allowing them to put every cent of their part-time wages into shelter, would be added to those homeless rolls. Not to mention the fact that there are 2 million people on the government dole who are not counted as unemployed - the subjects of our "pay for justice" system. If they were to release all the potheads onto the streets, unemployment would jump by another 3% - but instead of paying $8,000/yr in unemployment, food stamps, whatever for them we are paying $30,000 to house each one of at least a half-million of them.

Take a good look at the empty malls, the shuttered stores. The anti-immigrant fervor today is not because Americans hate Mexicans, but because Americans don't believe there enough jobs to go around. Even among those who ARE working, real salaries have fallen for the past 25 years. Inflation is being hidden, except when you go by the supermarket or the gas pump - but the government indicators say inflation is low.

It will not take much more to tip this into a 30s like depression, with 25% unemployment and blocks long breadlines, where a company offering 30 jobs will have 3000 applicants.

BORROWED MONEY IS NOT WEALTH.

[fascisthunter]

4. I Am Seriously Considering Leaving this Country

it's one thing to fight for what is right, but being charged a huge bill for a bunch of greedy fascists on Wall Street? FUCK THAT!