None dare call it Depression

Did you know practically everyone was in denial that the Great Depression was indeed an unprecedented economic calamity for more than a year after it began?

Vox Day, author of "The Return of the Great Depression," makes that point in his new book.

He's predicting history repeating itself.

And his track record on predictions is pretty amazing.

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Just look what the WND columnist wrote seven years ago: "There can be little doubt that the implosion of the equity markets will soon be followed by the pricking of the credit and real-estate bubbles. As great financial houses such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, it is well within the realm of possibility that the triple whammy of the equity, credit and real-estate implosions will lead to the collapse of the entire global financial system."

Too bad George W. Bush and the Congress weren't reading Vox Day in 2002.

Maybe the success of his new book, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the 1929 stock-market crash this week, will bring his insights some attention.

I hope so.

Because Vox Day nails the problem.

It's about debt, he says.

"The level of debt in an economy is somewhat like a river rising towards its banks," he explains. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that once the water reaches a certain level, it's going to spill over the sides and flood everything. Unfortunately for the American people, the Congress and the Federal Reserve have been trying to prevent the river from rising by pouring more water into it. It's simply not going to work."

But don't think for a moment you already know the way out of this mess.

It's not as easy as following "conservative" economic prescriptions, says Vox Day.

Not only does he blow holes in the economic principles of "liberal" favorite John Maynard Keynes, he also goes after the revered vaunted free-market champion Milton Friedman. Vox Day suggests Friedman "reached the conclusion that monetary policy could be even more effective than Keynes had ever imagined."

Friedman's "solution for reducing the prospect for active intervention as well as the margin of human error was to propose the establishment of monetary rules instead of monetary authorities," the author explains.

"Friedman's dream," he writes, "remained essentially a Keynesian one of defeating the business cycle and utilizing technical measures to provide a means of permanent economic growth."

Day concludes that any economic actor in the industrialized nations today needs to understand and accept "that there is no easy, magical solution to a situation that has taken decades to come to fruition."

"Regardless of whether one traces the roots of the problem back to the 1971 creation of the 'full faith and credit' debt-dollar, the 1933 abandonment of the gold standard, or the 1913 establishment of the Federal Reserve, this is not a crisis that developed overnight and it will not sort itself out quickly either," he writes.

Noting the Great Depression brought about massive changes in American society that echo today, he believes that 80 years later, "the return of the Great Depression will surely inspire changes of similar magnitude."

"But we must dare to hope that this time," he concludes, "Americans and the people of other nations around the world will discover that the solution will not be found in more government control over society, but through an increase in human liberty and freedom for the individual economic actor."

I'm not going to tell you this will be an enjoyable read.

I'm not going to tell you there's good news on the final page of this book.

I'm not going to tell you that if you read this book your wildest dreams will come true.

But I am going to tell you that if you care about truth, reality and the future of your country, you need to read "The Return of the Great Depression."