wallydownundy

Barack Obama signed a bill today in Denver apportioning US$787 billion to stimulate the USA economy. That same day his aides say the President has not ruled out a second stimulus package.

Here in Australia AU$42 billion has been approved to kick-start the local economy. (Actually kick-start’s a poor verb. Australia hasn’t officially entered recession yet. The package will keep Oz on life support and out of the red.) Similar packages have been approved in dozens of other countries.

Yet on the day the bill was approved the Dow Jones fell, as did other major indices. The markets had already factored in the stimulus bill. They were responding to the dire news out of Japan. Tokyo forecasters say the country is in the worst recession since WWII. In many ways this downturn is looking more like a long-term depression that a temporary recession.

In the novel “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen readers follow a circus worker in 1930’s America. In one scene he is met at the train station by a local official and notes what an expensive car the man is driving. He comments that many would have been less excessive if they’d known what that Friday in October 1929 had in store.

So. We’re not the first to go through this. What did our grandparents and great grandparents do to survive? My Aunt Lottie washed plastic bags and reused them. Her husband Al saved string and had multi-coloured balls of it in various drawers. But more than that they did without.

Coles Supermarkets has already reported a decrease in steak sales and an increase in sausage sales. People are starting to trade down and do without.

What more can we learn from the dire decade of 1930 to survive the coming years?