And Robert Reich on what to do about it: "This is still not the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is a depression. And the only way out is government spending on a very large scale. We should stop worrying about Wall Street. Worry about American workers. Use money to build up Main Street and the future capacity of our workforce"
I like Reich's prescription very much. The Labor Department's broadest measure of unemployment, which includes those receiving unemployment benefits, people who have stopped looking for work, and who can't find full-time jobs, hit 15.6% in March.
And Barry Eichengreen and Kevin H. O'Rourke remind us that economists who say US economic conditions aren't as severe as the Great Depression miss the point. The Great Depression was a worldwide event. And tracking world economic conditions, this downturn is at least as bad as that one. (via rte)
