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 Second Thought; take it away:

 I noticed that in light of the recent SVB collapse (and the government's less-than-reassuring actions/reaction ) there are a few calls for a return to the gold standard , the idea being that if we get of the petrodollar and back to gold, there would be fewer recessions. First: the issue of the petrodollar may resolve itself sooner rather than later . Second: history says otherwise.  Let's start with a little background : On June 5, 1933, the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable. Soon after taking office in March 1933, President Roosevelt declared a nationwide bank moratorium...

 

I guess now that we're "officially" in a recession , it's OK to let other cats out of the bag . U.S. employers shed more than half a million jobs in November, accelerating a steady decline in the labor market with the worst monthly showing in 34 years. The report from the Labor Department is likely to raise fresh concerns about the depth and length of an ongoing recession, and could figure into hearings on Capitol Hill today about a proposed bailout of the Big Three Detroit automakers. The unemployment rate rose from 6.5 percent to 6.7 percent, the highest rate since the recession of the early 1990s. The figure was tempered by the fact that 422,000 workers left the labor market, likely discouraged by their inability to find a job. The unemployment rate only includes people actively looking for work. "Context is everything," Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said as hearings on the auto bailout began. A failure of...

More Right-Wing flap debunked: America has been in a recession since 2007 .

I've heard that if the media has to ask whether or not we're in a recession, than it's already happened. If that's true, than this news must mean that we're in the eye of the storm: The United States has already slipped into a deep recession that could be the most serious since World War II, said Martin Feldstein, president of the Cambridge group that is considered the official word on economic cycles. "The situation is bad, it's getting worse, and the risks are that the situation could be very bad," Feldstein said in a speech yesterday at a financial industry conference in Boca Raton, Fla. Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a professor of economics at Harvard University, said the chief causes of the shrinking economy are sinking housing prices, months of job losses, and turmoil in the financial markets.