When will it end?!

[Gustaf]

I'm going to be cautious when it comes to predicting the economic development. I will say, however, that it's going to be pretty damn bad over the next couple of years. If you look at how some of the interest rates are behaving right now, the implications are pretty scary...like Sam I believe there is a definite possibility of "blood in the streets" This is clearly going to be the worse global crisis since the Great Depression (and it is concievable that it might equal or surpass even that) and we all know what that led to. Hopefully, we have learned something since then but I'm not going to bet money on it.

Then again, I'm not quite as pessimistic as Sam. I do believe there is more competence to deal with this stuff today than there used to be. On the fundamental level I'm an optimist who believe that society gets progressively better at dealing with this stuff. So I'm not giving up on the idea that we can manage our way through "only" a deep economic crisis.

When it comes to the political side, it will be a spin-game. FDR managed to spin things in his own favour pretty efficiently and it remained a Democratic weapon for decades. The Swedish conservatives have failed spectuarly in the past, but are doing better now. It depends on whether Obama can achieve anything in resisting the down-turn and get people to believe it.