The L

She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an "L" on her forehead. 

-- Smashmouth

I am coming around to behaving like a bear. The smartest people I know, and the smartest people I don't know are saying that there is no end in sight. So right about now is a good time to get into the spirit of The L, which is what I'm calling this Global Depression. 

At first I thought, why not some play on the Dust Bowl or the Rust Belt? But I realized those are just local phenomenon. This is Global. So I went to one of the prophets of doom, Nouriel Roubini's website, which I read on the daily, almost. His latest news is this:

I just arrived to Hong Kong and I will next visit India later this week. When  the first thing you hear - from your  driver upon arrival to the airport in Hong Kong - is that business  and occupancy in hotels is down more than 30% you already know this is a very ugly recession in the entire Asian region as Hong Kong is an economic barometer for trade and economic activity all over Asia. For those who argue that the second derivative of economic activity is turning positive (i.e. economies are contracting but a slower rate than in Q4 of 2008) the latest data don’t confirm this relative optimism. In Q4 of 2008 GDP fell by about 6% in the US, 6% in the Eurozone, by 8% in Germany, by 12% in Japan, by 16% in Singapore and by 20% in South Korea. So things are even more awful in Europe and Asia than the US. So let us discuss next why there is a rising risk of a global L-shaped depression that would be even worse than the current ugly and painful U-shaped global recession:

You see, nobody can decide whether it's a recession or a depression or if there is a risk of inflation, disinflation, stagflation or deflation. All I can say is that anybody who thinks about this long enough gets a headache. And there are only a few cures for those kinds of headaches, all sorts of hedges. How do you hedge against financial ruin when all of the hedge funds are out of business. You say, OK we're ruined, but it's not the end of the world - we can always...

In the L, we'll have an alternate 60s reprise. Hairy bodies will come back, personal discovery of the amateur sort. There will be goofy demagogues who will spread a jokey kind of distrust of everything that approaches logic - a funky Jon Stewart with a mustache to replace his arch irony with genuine distrust. And then we'll listen to Jon Stewart complain, as if he were actually wise instead of just richly cashing in on today's fledgling subculture of snark.

We'll take the L. We collectively in America will take it. Me, I'm trying to find a way to rebel against it. I'll probably put my entire life at risk. Pray that I don't become like Nixon.