Where are the bread lines?

In the past several months I've been asked more than once, "If what we are going through really is the worst economic environment since the Great Depression, where are the bread lines?"

The answer to this question that you'll get by listening to any of the empty suits on CNBC, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, or any of the other propaganda engines masquerading as the media would be, due to swift action on the part of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government the economy was rescued from a depression hence you don't seen bread lines and widespread misery. The first reality is that we don't see bread lines because the propaganda engines don't show you bread lines when you watch them or read them.

However, the reasons why we haven't yet seen the massive bread lines that are associated with the Great Depression go beyond what the propaganda engines are willing to show us. Consider the fact that Social Security didn't come into existence until 1935. Food stamps didn't come into existence until 1939. Unemployment insurance began in 1936. Credit cards didn't come into use until 1951.

Now consider that 20.7 million Americans received unemployment benefits at some point in 2009, 37 million Americans are on Food Stamps, credit cards are ubiquitous, millions are living rent free in homes while they wait for the mortgage holder to foreclose and it becomes rather obvious why this depression doesn't at this point include massive bread lines. There are in fact bread lines, however the modern day version of it is food stamps. What would the national sentiment be if you turned on the television to see 37 million Americans in bread lines? I'll take a bet that it would be outrage, panic, depression, and perhaps violence in Washington and Wall Street.

Draw your own conclusions as to what all of this means, but don't for a minute believe that because you don't see widespread reporting of events that look like what you've been taught the Great Depression looked like that we have somehow come to the edge of the abyss and been rescued.

Also consider this, President Herbert Hoover did not begin describing the economic situation America was in as a "depression" until 1931, nearly 2 years after the stock market crash of October 1929 began the Great Depression.