They didn’t know it was the Great Depression in the first year

Recession or depression? Too early to tell
Many differences between now and 1930s but some similarities, too
[link to www.msnbc.msn.com]

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They didn’t know it was the Great Depression in the first year,” said Neil Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse. “It’s sort of like sort of reading 2008 day-by-day in the newspapers. Why didn’t we know this was about to happen? The reason is you’re living in the fog of unfolding events.”

Those unfolding events are certainly cause for concern, especially given the similarities between today’s headlines and the 1930s. The Great Depression followed a major expansion of consumer credit and home buying; the unwinding of that boom sent consumer spending plummeting. After a period of rapidly rising stock prices, the crash of 1929 destroyed billions of dollars of wealth; stock prices didn’t recover for decades.