No, what is going on now is the takeover of government by private business, which is called fascism. What happened in '08 was a collapse of the world economic system due to the greed and adventurism of the financial industry and the banks. Only a massive injection of deficit capital prevented a total disaster. What is happening today is caused by a natural disaster instead, but the response is the same. The only reason the working man is getting a break today is because its an election year.

Still, the bills will be due soon enough, in the form of runaway deficits and galloping inflation, probably accompanied by another depression. If the Democrats win the Presidency in 2020, they will show up just in time to be blamed for it. If the GOP wins, they'll say; "Oh, its all the fault of Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare 'entitlements', we'll just have to shut down those socialist giveaway programs, unleash American business by removing all regulation and stimulate the economy with another tax cut for our wunderful entreprenewers".

We've seen this movie before, in 1929, 1987, 2000, and on a smaller scale, many other times before and after. Its the REAL "business cycle", its what you always get when you let the business community do any goddamn thing it wants. Their greed and their candidates screw up the economy, and the Democrats are left to clean up the mess.

Wise up, if you've lost your job, or if your small business has failed, or if your life savings have evaporated, or if you've lost your home, it isn't because of what some hippy dippy Kollege Perfesser wrote, or some gay Hollywood producer said, or because the blacks are rioting in Baltimore or too many Mexicans are picking our fruit. Its because some Republican boss in a Republican administration decided you were no longer profitable to him and his pals. The rich never go broke in hard times, the rest of us do. The economist's fancy word for that is "income inequality".