Identical Elements of the 1929 and Current Depressions

1929 Depression

Liquidity expansion:
In the "roaring twenties" the value of shares in the
New York Stock Exchange, the biggest in the world,
had increased five fold

Stock market crash:
1932: stocks had lost 89% of their 1929 peak value
1929 share value was not reached again until 1954

Bank failures:
President Hoover refused to assist failing banks
All banks failed in 1932

GDP:
Down 50% in 1932

Unemployment:
13 million workers became unemployed with no relief to speak of; a third of the population sank into abject poverty

Fake investment (gambling) funds:
Brokers' loans, buying on margin: investors could pay down only a percentage of what they were investing


Current Depression

The FED has continued to pump currency into the stock market and investment funds resulting in the dot.com, stocks, and housing bubbles bursting

Stock market crash:
A series of crashes beginning in the 1980s

Bank failures:
Banks are failing worldwide but most failures are being covered up by central bank loans
Banks are having to "write off" tens of billions of bad investments and are now going hat-in-hand to foreign investors to sell a piece of their business

GDP::
20% decline in the GDP and a 50% decline in the value of the dollar

Unemployment:
Unemployment figures are falsified; at least 25% of American workers are unemployed or underemployed
A third of the population lives in poverty

Fake investment (gambling) funds:
Hedge funds: The estimated assets of these funds have risen from $491 billion in 2000 to $1.75 trillion in 2007. The funds' complicated financial transactions, mostly secret and unregulated, use debt as a tradeable security in the search for short term gain

The 1930s depression appeared to be the result of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, but 1929 only made apparent a systemic defect, capitalism's chronic overproduction in its decadent phase. This same phase of chronic overproduction began again as early as 1968, finally resulting in the present depression

http://www.new-enlightenment.com/2008_depression.htm