Depression Special Report

~ ~ ~

Statistics may be defined as "a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty." -- W.A. Wallis

~ ~ ~

Excerpt from "Depression Special Report: Overview" By John Williams, www.shadowstats.com.

U.S. Economy Is in a Multiple-Dip Depression. The grand benchmark revision of the national income accounts on July 31, 2009 confirmed that the U.S. economy is in its worst economic contraction since the first downleg of the Great Depression, which was a double-dip depression. The current economic downturn increasingly will be referred to as a depression, and it is far from over. There will be intermittent blips of new activity... yet, this downturn will continue to deteriorate, proving to be extremely protracted, extremely deep and particularly nonresponsive to traditional stimuli.

The economy suffers from underlying structural problems tied to consumer income, where households cannot keep up with inflation and no longer can rely on excessive debt expansion for meeting short-falls in maintaining living standards. The structural issues are not being addressed meaningfully and cannot be addressed without a significant shift in government economic and trade policies, which under the best of circumstances still would drag out economic woes for many years.

While the current circumstance should become recognized as a "depression," worse lies ahead as the U.S. government’s long-range insolvency and current efforts at debasing the U.S. dollar trigger a hyperinflation in the next five years.

Unlike Zimbabwe, which has been able to maintain some level of functioning commerce during its hyperinflation, due to the backstop of an active black market in U.S. dollars, the United States has no such backstop. Accordingly, a U.S. hyperinflation likely would force cessation of regular commerce, triggering a great depression of a magnitude never before seen in the United States.

Read the entire 10-page report here or download the PDF.

Both contain charts and statistics to support the statements above.

Prepare accordingly.