UPI.com, 3 Dec 2008, MARTIN WALKER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- Two wholly predictable verdicts came in this week that between them suggest it's time to drop all these tired comparisons with the 1930s. As car sales collapse 30 percent to 40 percent and California goes broke, this is fast becoming a Great Depression of our own.
The National Board of Economic Research formally declared that the United States is in a recession and has been for a year. And Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, America's central banker, declared that the situation bore "no comparison" with the Great Depression, which was "an order of magnitude" more grave.
As Bernanke pronounced those words, the fall in metal prices over the last four months became greater than their fall in the four years from 1929 to 1933. This is not a cheap attempt to score a point, but to suggest that Bernanke is both right and wrong. This is not your grandfather's Great Depression; it is ours, and it will be different.
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