Sounds about right (both). Causes of this downturn: --Low interest rates/easy money during the Greenspan years (central planning) --The housing crisis precipita

Sounds about right (both). Causes of this downturn: --Low interest rates/easy money during the Greenspan years (central planning) --The housing crisis precipitated by government interventions such as Fannie, Freddie, anti-redlining regulations, etc. encouraging/forcing banks to lend to those who would be unable to repay. The future has yet to pan out but I, for one, expect the pork ("stimulus") to offer some short-term boosts/bubbles as people make cash grabs. But in the long term as people realize that the green paper is being devalued and they are encouraged to make poor investments things will get markedly worse or at best we'll miss out on what could have been. E.g., people are building windmills and ethanol stills instead of coal plants and oil rigs because the former are subsidized and the latter increasingly regulated. Unfortunately, it's a gamble as to whether windmills will match the effort put into them and there's a growing consensus that ethanol costs more than it affords outright. Think of it this way: If you put a dollar into a decent investment, you might expect a $1.10 in return. Similarly if you made a bad investment you might get $0.95 back. Now expand that to the net worth of the whole country. Depending on how well we manage our existing wealth in spite of the disincentives, it could take a long time to burn through 60 trillion dollars a nickel at a time. Maybe we'll continue to grow but the opportunity costs will mean it happens by pennies instead of by nickels.