"Sue, what are your thoughts on the transportation of food/goods in a greater depression than version 1 (the one that happened). My thoughts are that most everything will work as before, but that the prices will be prohibitive."

I don't visualize such a pretty picture. I would think it would happen as a domino effect.

Right now, we've got kind of a credit problem, home prices are dropping, more and more jobs are being outsourced to other countries, and our government is spending money we don't have like a bunch of drunken sailors on shore leave.

What happens if a large number of people default on their credit bills? What if people buying on credit is what is keeping many/most of our industries alive?

What will happen to the banking business? What happens if people start quietly withdrawing what little savings they have and hoarding cash? Part of the blame for the Great Depression was laid on the Federal Reserve, due to issuing a great amount of paper money, which led to the rise of the stock market, and when that bubble broke, the Great Depression followed. Do you think the way the Federal Reserve operates has improved, or is it a liability?

If existing homes can't sell for even for what is owed on them, will the construction industry start to fail? If the construction industry goes under, what happens to all the businesses that sell to them?

Right now, the cost of fuel is raising the prices of all goods. Is everyone's paycheck increasing to cover the difference? Unless a lot of people use even more credit (that they can't pay off), they are getting less product for every dollar they spend, and they only have a limited number of dollars. What are they giving up? Is what they're not buying causing manufacturing business owners to lose sleep?

When manufacturers realize that their sales have dropped, they're going to lay off people and try to stay alive by producing only their best sellers. They could try raising prices, but if peoples' buying power is dropping, what do you think will happen?

Most American farmers bought into the big farm/single crop/high debt pipe dream, and they walk a narrow line between profit and loss. What happens if crop prices fall to the point they can't make any profit at all? Just pick one, like corn or soybeans. A lot of America's farm crops are sold overseas. If they try to raise the price there to offset their losses here, what do you think will happen?

Our money has no value, it is based solely on faith in our economy. What happens if a large part of America looses faith? (That's what the Stock Market Crash of 1929 was, and it got worse by 1933.)

If businesses can't make enough money to stay in business, they go under. If enough businesses fail, the resulting unemployment gets a trifle severe. If more business fail than are operating, how does the State pay unemployment? And when your six months of unemployment ends (if you got it), and there is still no jobs in sight, what do you do then?

I think NOTHING would work as before. If we even reached the point where only bare necessities were being produced, our unemployment would probably be very high. (In the Great Depression, unemployment was about 25%, but most women didn't work, so might we be looking at a 50% rate or higher?)

Last month (November, 2007) the total number of unemployed people in the U.S. was 7.2 million (4.7%), out of a total of 154 million. If 50% is a reasonable figure, we're looking at maybe 75 million destitute people.

But the price of gas might go down.

Sue