We're In a Greatest Depression

Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker opines on our current economic status -

Yes, I know all about the stock market rally from last March. I know all about the claimed GDP "improvement." But I also know that we got both by adding more than $2 trillion in debt to the United States - or roughly 14% of GDP - over the space of the last 18 months. That's about 10% of GDP annualized, and incidentally, a 10% GDP contraction is the common economist's definition of an Economic Depression.

So let's cut the crap - we are in a Depression right now. We are pretending we are not, just like you can pretend you didn't really lose your job so long as your credit card does not reach its limit. We have been in that depression for about 18 months and there is no evidence that we will exit it, as we have yet to find a way to pull back the deficit spending without an instantaneous collapse in the economy.

You haven't seen the half of what happened though - not yet. It appears that AIG - the company we have bailed out (thus far) to the tune of some $100 billion plus, in fact isn't done. It appears they may have written credit protection on Greece. If this allegation by the German equivalent to The New York Times is true Americans are going to be asked to pay billions of dollars - or more likely, hundreds of billions (since Greece is almost certainly not the only place - try Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc) to bail out a bunch of FOREIGN NATIONS.

If you do not believe it is going to get much worse than it is now, economically and otherwise, you once again need to go have that Thorazine dosage adjusted.