My only point is that based on what we’ve seen to date, we are so far away from the devastation of the 1930s that it is misleading even to mention the current downturn and the Great Depression in the same breath.

This is much like being half way across a crumbling bridge and congratulating yourself on a successful crossing. This is at the least disengenuine if not deceitful. It is not a sin to say we don’t know something.

The evidence of criminal fraud in the banking and insurance systems is so overpowering that it gives one much reason to suspect the integretity of the government data as a whole. After all, until September of 2008 the government was claiming we weren’t even in a recession, just a “rough patch” whatever that means. This recession has been backdated to 2007 and that occurred in December of 2008.

While I certainly hope for the best for this economy, I don’t want to invest my future and my fortune on lies and mistatements. I’m referring to the government data and not your fine analysis when I say this. I think you need to put this is a much broader perspective and understand this is not an ordinary financial crisis, this is a generational panic induced by a number of factors, including peak oil, financial fraud and 3 decades of debt based growth gutting the wealth of a nation.

I think it is too early to do anything but pray and prepare, I have not seen unemployment rates this high in my lifetime, and that is using the “official” rates and not the real rates which seem evident when I travel about the country. The government has never bailed out anyone for the trillions of dollars currently spent, or spent so much money trying to manipulate markets and industries. These alone should be clues to you that more than GDP numbers are needed to understand what is occurring world wide in this crisis.

I think you are allowing a statistical tree to block your view of the forest.