I’m not ranting, merely pointing out that the New Deal was designed to remedy the “excesses” of capitalism, not cure the disease itself.

By the most conservative estimate, some 2 MILLION enrollees passed through the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1942 – most estimates put the total at closer to 3 million. Add to this the hundreds of thousands of people who got jobs working in the camps as educators, foremen, and supervisors and the number of jobs provided easily passes into the low millions. But it doesn’t stop there. Because of the CCC, hundreds of thousands of folks went to work making uniforms, photo books, camp supplies, uniform insignia, patches and so forth. More new candy bars were introduced during the CCC era than any other time before or since because of the increased demand for candy in the camps. Who do you think was making that candy?

Say what you want against the New Deal as an overarching system or program, but don’t try to argue that the CCC wasn’t a successful program in its own right.

The aggregate fossil in terms of wells, has peaked world-wide. There is still oil in those wells, but the cost to extract it is far exceeds the energy produced from the oil.

This is true of every energy source. The dependency on fossil is much more than a political slogan. It is a reality that is at the root of the long declining American economy. GDP is a phony and much doctored indicator.

Technology is not an energy source. And Americans have been lulled into thinking there’s a technological fix to a absolute finite resource.

To think that this is a “replay” of the Great Depression is to face one of the dire situations human-kind has had to face as a species.

The dependency on fossil is not about changing the channel on your TV to something else. It is what James Howard Kunstler calls the Long Emergency and it’s being treated with business as usual fixes that have never worked and are now exaserbating the deep problems; one that is, I think, beyond many people’s comprehension.

My point is this is much more than not a trivial matter. There are 3 E’s completely different variables in where we’re at based on the choices/decisions made over the last 60 years (most over the last 35).

These are Economic Debt, Energy, and Environment. We’re hitting a WALL. That wall is defined simply – NET ENERGY.

You can print money and create all the debt around totally unbacked loans (gold standard was eliminated in 1973); but you can’t beat the WALL.

Energy and the Environment (natural resources) will not tolerate the expotential upswing. Energy requirements are massive. Hover and FDR had nothing comparable to the massive use of fossil. Americans depend utterly on fossil. While I’m for solar and wind, this in no way touches the insatible demand for petro. It touches every human invention, every city, every home, your food, your cloths, EVERYTHING.

The WALL is there. Peak oil is not a theory. It happens when it costs more to pull fossil from the belly of the earth. That very simply is Net Energy. We depend on enough net energy for our so-called “way of life”.

None of that was at issue during the Great Depression. Yes, there was speculation, and the banks producing money, etc. But the US had barely entered the World stage when the GP happened.

The GDP (the excellorator when the break is called for) was not even in place when the GD hit. GDP has kept us on an unsustainable path as we use it to speak to our “growth”. We equate “growth” with “prosperity” as we’ve excelerated our dependency with less and less energy sources. Add to this the growth of population which is straight up on the map.

The “baby boom” never existed during GD. The bulge further puts all bets off.

No, this is not the 1930s, not even close. We have to get use to the fact that we are navigating blind.

The WALL will force the species into another track. Hopefully one that brings about a better, saner, and more sustainable living arrangement on the planet.

Misuse of land and resources today far exceeds anything then. That means we have less of a safety net. Another safety net which is absent today is that far fewer people know how to take care of themselves. Many do not have basic skills like sewing, growing food, mechanics or construction. When their real estate sales license does not support them they are helpless.

People like Uncle Miltie Friedmann made their names and fortunes rewriting history to blame monetary policy or protectionism for the Great Depression. They are hacks or servants of vested interests trying to move attention away from the real causes of the crash, which were speculation and imbalance of wealth.

Wealth must be spread around for society to function. Like manure piling it up in a great heap, it poisons the ground it sets on. Money is of no value unless it is circulating. Money has no intrinsic value. It cannot be worn or eaten. And speculation is of no more value to society than casino gambling. Talk of a finance “industry” or financial “products” is nonsense. They produce nothing and are of no value unless they operate in support of someone who does.

Abraham Lincoln said Labor is prior to and independent of capital. All capital proceeds from labor. Those words have been forgotten today as capital is made into a god.

The debt trends (along with several other key indicators) are a completely different animal then when the GD happened.

It is clear given the continued issuing of paper money backed by nothing that the US of A is insolvent. Our trade relationships are more like those a third world nation has – we export soybeans to China and they export computer components to us. In other words, we are exporting raw goods (which is what “third world” nations do) and we import finished products.

“To paraphrase the late economist Kenneth Boulding, anyone who thinks this a winning long-term econmic strategy is either a lunatic or a neoliberal economist.”

American workers (and workers throughout the world) work to provide wealth for a few. That wealth is not “money” but the privatization of the means of wealth – land and natural resources.

The other little secret (myth) is that we play this game as if we (US) actually have assets. The continent of the US is hardly a bargaining tool or marker for an economy. Our human assets are depleted as we’ve kept Americans at best ill-educated on all levels – hence the kind of pathological elections that support the worst policies from a two party system. One example (and there are countless) just look at the healthcare system – for delivery and cost and outcomes arguably the worst in the world.

The fact that we use the GDP to gauge the well-being of this economy while wages plummet and the gap between the wealthy and the rest widen to a point unknown in this country’s history, tells it all. GDP has nothing to do with 99% of American quality of life. This is all based on consumer economics which is literally a DEADend.

But the expotential growth of our use of natural resources, environmental degradation, and debt – together, bears NO relationship to the Great Depression. This trend over time doesn’t begin until the 70s and ramps up in the late 80s and 90s slopping ever upward in an almost perpendicular fashion through the early 21st Century. It cannot continue…

This aint your Grandma’s depression. We are in unchartered waters that has little to do with our catch phases and analogies of “fixing” it.

I think you have it on something. There are a lot of myths surrounding the Great Depression. One that I have heard that “protectionism” deepened the Depression. It is clear that was caused the depression was that the working class was bogged down with credit that it stifled their demand. If there is going to be a depression that will be the real cause.

In the U.S., working people had to keep up by using credit. They needed credit not just for maintaining day-to-day consumption but I know people who took risk with that credit because they do not have DEFINED BENEFITS like a pension. They have the bogus 401k and their investments was under water way before the sh*t hit the fan. Now what are they going to do for a retirement.

It is clear that the problem is that working people do not have access to the wealth that they produce. That wealth is stolen by the “markets”. and used to generate wealth for those that control and are involved in the financial markets. That wealth needs to be reclaimed by the people.

Look at how Treasury is using the bailout money — to buy shares in the failing banks rather than a MASSIVE redistribution program that puts that money into the hands of citizens.