I try not to get too excited by this sort of article, not necessarily because I don't believe them, but because I don't understand them. All these financial dudes speak with such authority about this stuff, but they all sing a different tune. For laymen like us, how do we know who to believe? In fact, why should believe any of them? They got us into this mess.

They range all over from "The sky is falling." to "Everything's fine, trust us, we know what we're doing." But after the crash, the factories will still be there, the skilled workers will still be there, the farms and mines and forests and fisheries will still be there. Nothing will have changed except the scorekeepers will be playing by a new set of rules, and basically, they don't produce anything. Wealth comes from the earth's resources and human labor, or at least, as long as energy is still available. Everything and everyone else is just overhead.

Yeah, I know, depressions are very real, and the world has experienced many of them. But basically, there's not much any of us can do except either 1) Pay off all your bills and save as much cash as you can. OR 2) Borrow as much as you can and liquidate all your paper assets for hard goods while they are still worth something. After all, they don't have debtor's prisons any more. All they can do is take away your credit.

Besides, if worse comes to worse, either fascism or feudalism will kick in and the trains will be running again on time in nothing flat.