In the late 1980s I attended a talk at a political gathering in San Francisco. The speaker asked the audience members to think about the scores of homeless peop

In the late 1980s I attended a talk at a political gathering in San Francisco. The speaker asked the audience members to think about the scores of homeless people they saw walking to the event. The speaker then made a statement that I'll never forget: "This is what a modern depression looks like." When most people think of a Depression, the image that comes to mind is black-and-white photos of mobs of people standing in bread lines. What if 1930s-style depressions are no longer possible? Central banks intervene in every crisis no matter how small, handing out freebies to banks and financial institutions. However, these groups can only spend so much money on themselves. A little gets spent on frivolous crap like vacations, boats, and watches, a lot gets spent on ridiculous startup ideas and other terrible speculations, and the vast majority gets parked in the stock and bond markets where it grows and grows with each new infusion of fake money. What if modern central banking has made a repeat of the Great Depression impossible? Consider the possibility that the US has been in the modern equivalent of a Depression since the 1980s. It doesn't feel like a Depression because most people have housing and jobs, and GDP goes up. But focusing on these metrics ignores three very annoying pieces of information: 1. wages have been flat for many years 2. inflation for essential goods/services (housing, health care, child care) has outpaces inflation year after year 3. the homeless problem just keeps getting worse