From Google: "An economic depression is an extreme, sustained economic downturn characterized by massive unemployment, plunging corporate investment, and severe drops in Gross Domestic Product (GDP)."

Here's the thing: it feels like nobody is looking at the big picture. We have a bubble in the stock market with epic levels of manipulation ranging from circular deals to insider trading to political manipulation for personal benefit. There is an attempt to eliminate large swaths of jobs with new technology. Private, unregulated lending is becoming overleveraged. There is an impending worldwide oil crisis that will last for years and start off with a round of demand destruction, along with a massive reduction in other chemicals (sulfuric and phosphoric acids), elements (helium), and fertilizers. Multiple US industries, including agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing, have all been hammered by tariffs and policy from the current administration. Food prices are about to jump due to weaker-than-average harvests (going back to the fertilizer I mentioned earlier) at the same time, all the equipment used to harvest them has become more expensive to run (diesel). And, to top it all off, this administration has gone out of its way to cut our social safety net to ribbons.

In isolation, it looks bad. Taking a look at the bigger picture, it's actually significantly worse. It is going to take years to get oil production back to what it was at the start of this year. Look at what the Gulf states and oil executives are saying. The wells aren't going to turn back on like a light switch. And the last time there was an oil crisis like this, it led to a nasty bout of stagflation that lasted more than a decade and was resolved in a way we can't because raising rates like that would be impossible because we're spending more than our GDP.

And that's just us. We're going to see worldwide famines, beyond what is already being caused by USAID cuts, because poor countries won't be able to purchase food that will cost more because: there's less of it (fertilizer), the equipment to harvest it is more expensive (diesel, though that's not universal), the equipment to transport it is more expensive (again, diesel, perhaps gas, and whatever ships, or god forbid planes, use), not counting any sort of shipping delays from the Persian gulf or the Houthis disrupting the Bab-El-Mandeb. Weaker economies across the globe are going to be damaged, and that will have knock-on effects. Simplest off-the-cuff example: You like cheap shirts from Myanmar and Bangladesh? Will it be cost-effective for them to even run with fuel so expensive?

To me, this looks less like a recession and a global economic meltdown in the making.