I am inclined to agree with Arney on the debt paydown. Of course, that may be easier for me to say, since I don't have much debt beyond my home and about six bills. My sister and BIL are in debt to their eyebrows... I wonder how much of it would be actually useful after the power went off? *shrug*

I am really having a hard time visualizing what a 'Greater' Depression would look like -- am I over-estimating or under-estimating? The only real comparison we have is the depression of 1930-44, a time period that was greatly different from how things are now.

I'm thinking that water and food will be the Big Problems. Since 1930, we have lost about four of our six million farms. Then, our farms were located all over America, everywhere, local food production. Now, it seems to be centered in California and the Midwest, hardly local, and requires transport.

Our aquifers have been in steady decline for decades. Rain doesn't fall everywhere like it does here in the PNW (and even we might be dry for 4-5 months), or it seems to come all at once. If you can catch it, where do you store it for the dry times, realistically? If you would have to depend on rivers, many are heavily contaminated, so how to clean up chemicals and heavy metals? Is it even realistically possible?

With the advent of the computer age, we've learned to sneer at production and brag about how service-oriented we are. How many computer specialists can we use when companies can't pay their power bills?

In 2008, there were a grand total of 497,100 workers left in the U.S. textile, textile product, and apparel manufacturing industries, and most are in CA, NC, and GA.

How many companies here make gardening hand tools? Small grain mills? Wood saws and axes? Canning jars, rings, lids? How-to books? Milking buckets? Chicken wire & hardware cloth? Sheet metal?

I have the feeling that these kinds of things will be the new 'gold standard'. How long would it take enterprising people to get factories for things like this up, running and producing? Will any existing banks help them, or will it be a community thing?

There are so many questions! But how many answers? Is it going to be a wait-and-see-OOOPS! kind of thing?

Sue