Another depression?

Thom Hartmann -   In three weeks, on my birthday May 7th, it’ll be exactly 80 years since Germany signed terms of surrender at the headquarters of US General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Reims, France.

That year, 1945, also signaled the official end of the Republican Great Depression. And May 7 of this year may well signal the beginning of the Second Republican Great Depression, the fourth major economic crash in our history. Troublingly, every one of the prior three financial crises also tripped off a major war.

As Neal Howe points out in his book The Fourth Turning Is Here, it was roughly 80 years or four generations from the Credit Crisis of 1772 which provoked the American Revolutionary War until the Panic of 1857, which set the stage for the Civil War.

Another 80 years passed between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the end of the Republican Great Depression (which triggered WWII) and May 7, 1945. And here we are, exactly 80 years later, on the verge of another depression and possibly a third world war.

Howe posits that 80 years is how long it takes for the generation that made the mistakes that produced the last depression to die off and thus not be available to warn about those same errors being repeated. And depressions almost always lead to wars.