[Brilliant]

10,000 banks failed during the Great Depression. So far, we’ve had 23. The money supply contracted by 30% during the Depression. Our monetary base has almost doubled in just two months.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE

We’re in a recession, but it at this point the recession we’re in doesn’t even rival the 2001 recession in depth, and that was the mildest recession in history.

If you want to compare this recession to the Depression, then you should have some parallels. But where are they?

[rb22982]

#1) The banks were a lot smaller and more numerous in the 20s/30s than now. We've had tons of consolidation.
#2) We've had insane government intervention to prevent banks from failing - guaranteeing 8.5 trillion, accepting $2 trillion in collateral at the Fed, and another $500 billion already spent on the TARP and other bailouts.
Increasing the monetary base by printing was not possible with the gold/silver standard back then. That doesn't mean anything about the economy when it's just printing.

Parallels? Huge 1st year decline in stocks, 2-3% jump in unemployment, 5% jump in broad based unemployment, bank failures by deposit amount was huge, breaking the buck, bonds trading at depression levels, GDP should contract at 7+% rate this quarter and next, 9 consecutive quarters of shrinking corporate profits, etc. Again, we're in the EARLY stages--in 1929/30 they weren't calling it the great depression yet or even a depression for a long time.