“personally...I think we are in a soft depression...”
That’s my suspicion as well and it’s not hard to guess the reason why.
There was a massive collapse in financial assets owned by banks when the housing bubble popped and millions of people defaulted on their mortgages. A very large number of banks found themselves without the assets to support their outstanding loans, they were technically bankrupt.
The hard depression and massive deflation of the 1930s was the result of one third of our banks going under. We could have experienced a replay of that except for some safeguards put in place in the banking system, FDIC being one, and the fact that the Fed learned from its 1930s experience and was proactive in keeping banks afloat this time. It appears that that was what TARP was for, although it was done without protecting the taxpayers IMO.
yes
So....is the price of crude even going to go up?