The Third Depression
This depression is similar to the Great Panic of 1873; The US and Europe are heading towards deflation, tens of millions will never work again. "It is the victory of an orthodoxy [..] whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times. Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31. Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses. We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression.