“This is a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis,” Ballmer told a retreat of House Democrats in Williamsburg, Va. “There is a lot of history around that, and frankly if you stop and think about it, 1837, 1873, 1929, 2008, it’s almost exactly a whole lifetime between each of the major economic difficulties that we face.”

Ballmer said that economic growth in the last 25 years was fueled by innovation, globalization, and debt–and that the current levels of debt were unsustainable. “In 1929, for example, just before the stock market crash, the private debt-to-GDP ratio was 160 percent,” he said. “Last year, private sector debt as a percentage of the GDP: 300 percent, far more leverage.”

Via Mish.

Okay, yeah, Depression 2.0 here we come. The peak was 2x as high as 1.0, the fallout could be 2x as bad. Hold on to your butts.

Tags: depression 2.0, holy shit, no really we're really fucking fucked this time, we're fucked

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 19:09.