Do you think the U.S. is in the early years of a depression?

No. What we are in are the early years of a long term stagnation. The sort that Europe and Japan went through from 1982-2007 while the US was experiencing more rapid economic growth. And the reason is that we are adopting the government-heavy economic policies that pervaded Europe and Japan.

Words have a way of changing their meaning.

Before the Great Depression of 1930s, the word 'depression' was used to describe every recession. Because the word 'depression' was considered more mild than the word 'recession', and the politicians didn't want to scare the people by calling an economic slowdown a 'recession'.

But with everyone calling a severe 10-year economic slowdown a 'depression' made the word 'depression' scary for everyone. And that's why everyone is using the word 'recession' now.

But if the present recession turns into a great 10 or 20-year economic slowdown, then the politicians and businessmen will probably stop using the word 'recession' and will find some other less scary word to use.

Its like that here in Ireland but every one at this stage has come to terms with it,I think America is starting to go that way.In ireland there's tons of building sites half finished because no one wants th houses anymore because they can't afford it,in the place i live 12 shops have closed down since christmas,in my town we don't have big shopping malls just small businesses and with the recession things have gotten so expensive yet people are still buying things they don't even need to keep up appearances? its so stupid and the Irish government don't do much to help they basically caused this.

I'd say America will be okay i mean the amount of People that visit it each nd every year and all the money they spend?

I am more of a pessimist so yes I believe we are in the early years of a depression. My main worry is where we have evolved as a country. We have progressed from actually manufacturing to serving. Some may argue that that is the natural evolution of an industrial society, but I think we have gone too far.

A lot of our workforce is involved in moving paper rather than producing things. A large majority of our blue collar workforce is engaged in menial service jobs. Our stock market has been taken over by flash traders who are motivated by making profits in micro seconds and our retirements are in their mercy as they control how the market swings because of their volume.

On the one hand we see wages and benefits drying up for blue and even white collar jobs, but on the other hand we also see protections for workers because of illness or layoffs decreasing ( the watered down health bill notwithstanding). Food and other prices are higher though government figures for inflation happily avoid such items and so inflation is low. Add to this, certain trades be it plumbing or electrical or auto mechanic they are still charging high dollar figures. So all in all families are getting more squeezed. They are unable to save for retirement.

Compound to this our current account, budget and trade deficit along with fighting two wars which are draining a lot of money, the picture does not look rosy.

A large part of this is our own doing as a result of over consuming and over leveraging ourselves. But there are larger forces at play which we are powerless to control. My pessimism tells me its time to hunker down.

I hope I am wrong.

The world economy cannot sustain at it's current level without the US being economically involved.

If we retract, it's an initial recession for us, but if the world goes into a recession, then what's a recession?

It's all relative.