Another Great Depression?

[grey]

*snip* it is teaching people how to live 'simply' and with less things. It's getting people to ride bikes to work, hang laundry out to dry and grow tomatoes where ever they can. It is getting people to look at solar energy and alternative energy a little more seriously. Maybe this time we will follow through?

I agree 100%. This year I have really been learning how to can, freeze, and preserve just about everything I grow, and I put in a much larger garden this year. Next year's will be even bigger. I do hang laundry on the line - I actually enjoy it, somehow it doesn't bother me as much to fold laundry as I take it down as it does to pull that big wad of clothes from a dryer. When gas hits $5 a gallon, I hope I'm in good enough shape to finally ride up that mountain for the place I work at on some weekends. It may be brutal, but at least the route home is cake.

*snip*As far as the FDIC that is one I sometimes don't understand- the banks I have my money in, if they went under, and my $100K was still in the vault, how is the FDIC going to get it for me? That is the part I don't understand, if things are that bad, how is the FDIC going to make everything better?

As I understand it, the FDIC can return your money to you anytime within 50 years or something like that. They aren't under the gun to give it to you during your lifetime.

[Mr. Bloom]

As I understand it, the FDIC can return your money to you anytime within 50 years or something like that. They aren't under the gun to give it to you during your lifetime.

As a practical matter, I don't believe that this is true for insured deposits. That may be the case for uninsured deposits where the underlying assets (generally loans) of the institution have to be collected first. Uninsured deposits will still have priority to other creditors in liquidation. With Indymac, they've already approved a 50% dividend which means that half of the uninsured deposits are being made available to the account holders (indicating that they believe there's value in the liquidation).

As a practical matter, on insured deposits, the name of the bank simply chanages following the failure...

If anyone knows differently, I welcome the record being set strength.

Keep in mind, when I say "as a practical matter", there's been over 3,000 bank failures in the last 30 years...there's good precedent on their actions/behaviors.

[OakLeaf]

Water's going to be the big sticking point.

It's easy to learn to grow your own food - even staples aren't TOO terribly hard to thresh, such as many people did when they were panicked about the Y2K bug. And transportation machinery (bicycles, wagons etc.) can last a long time.

Water is another thing. In many parts of the country it's easy enough to build windmills. In other parts, people's water currently comes from as far away as their electricity. (Remember the opening chapter of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" on why she decided to move the family back East? And, water was the huge omission from "The Omnivore's Dilemma.")

There used to be a saying "water will be the next oil." Now that we're far enough past peak oil that people are starting to notice, I think we're about to understand that saying.