With the Dow over 9000, is this really the worst crisis since the Great Depression?

For starters, never assume that just because the Dow is up now, it will remain up. The economy is still shaky, and economists are still worried about a "double dip recession". As it stands, it looks as if a depression is not in the offing.

The real question is whether it WOULD have been a second Great Depression had the government not acted. They certainly threw a lot of money at the problem. It would be nice to know if all of that money really helped or not, especially since all of that money was borrowed.

That debt will one day have to be paid back, and we may simply have moved that depression down the road. Ask ten economists as to whether or not the money was well spent and you'll get twelve different answers. The majority view follows Keynsian economics, in which the money added to the economy provides sufficient demand to match the supply that was otherwise going unused.

That keeps prices from going into the deflationary cycle that marks a depression. Other economists disagree. They say that the Keynsian economists were overestimating the depth of the recession in the first place.

Others say that by bailing out the failing institutions that got us into the recession in the first place, we've merely perpetuated them. That means we'll face the problem again in a few years, only with a higher debt load. The Dow is usually a leading indicator, meaning that it recovers before other aspects of the economy.

Money in the stock market only gradually makes its way into jobs, especially if investors are too jittery to open new business ventures. The jobless rate is still high and may climb for a while. The general consensus among economists is that a Great Depression has been averted, but they're still very worried about the national debt load, which was a problem even before this latest crisis.

And because other economists disagree, we haven't even learned the lesson we'd really like to know: whether or not that money was well spent. A swift recovery tends to make the star of the Keynsian economists rise, but if it's just a red herring, then we've spent a lot of money to learn the wrong lesson. Even if the Keynsians are right, it means that we can expect inflation from the stimulus money.

That means they have to slow down the economy to avoid the opposite problem, which tends to crush job growth just as it's getting started. So the problem may not be as bad as expected, but it's not over yet.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.