History repeats?

I spent some time surfing the NY Times yesterday during naptime, and came across some very interesting articles. Seems our financial crisis, which was IMMINENTLY threatening our economy, lest we take immediate action, has not rebounded much even given our immediate action, and has in fact continued to decline, leaving almost anyone with any kind of stake in worse shape than a month ago. I haven't confirmed it, but I keep hearing that there were 200,000 job losses in October...in one month!? I'm not sure about this statistic, but certainly, we lost more jobs in October. There is a sense that this will be "the worst holiday shopping season in decades", and retailers haven't cleared out their autumn inventory, and are discounting stuff to move it. Hey, not SO bad for us peons, eh?

I also read an interesting parallel editorial piece called Talking Business: 75 Years Later, A Nation Hopes for Another FDR, about the transition from Hoover's administration to FDR's administration, and the seeming similarities to present day circumstances, even though our economic hardship is definitely on a much smaller order of magnitude than that of the Depression. In their day, unemployment was at 26%, to our 6%, for example. But certainly, these are the hardest times we've seen since the early 1930's, and all indicators seem to show that it's gonna get worse before it gets better. How far it goes is anyone's guess. I do feel confident that help is on the way with last week's historic Democratic victory. I guess we'll hold on to our seats until January and see what comes beyond.