Sharky:

My opinion is that we are in the middle of a depression. Not a recession. The difference is that in the depressions of bygone eras, the monetary and fiscal authorities were not as interventionists. Because of this the peak to trough in equity prices were more severe but the duration of elapsed time was less and the total number of down moves were fewer.

In other words, we do not see today as deep a crash but we will see more downdrafts and economic hardship which will last longer than the pre 1930's depressions.

It seems that the more intervention, the greater the number of down drafts. The individual downdrafts are not as severe but greater in number.

One of the main differences this time, is that we have two seperate economies. The developed and depressed western economies and the emerging and growing economies centered more in the east.

As the growing eastern economies gain in strength and power, they will counteract the the weakness in total world economic activity and will in fact consume much more energy of all forms. The result will be an increase in world total demand but, we are still in the variable adjusting period.

When all is done, we will have a world which will have come through great travails and will be almost unreconizable from the world we have grown up in,

Brian