Now that the government FINALLY acknowledges that we were in Recession for most, if not all, of 2008, do current indicators not foreshadow a Depression?

For instance, the Great Automakers of Detroit are on life support and Uncle Sam could pull the plug at any moment. Chrysler just this week announced closure of 30 plants--for a month--in hopes that demand catches up with supply. But just WHO is buying cars today?

On Wall Street, entire floors are emptying out in those shiny skyscrapers. Imagine going to work and there are entire floors empty both above and below yours. What does this do to the psychology of those who still have jobs, not to mention those who find themselves "thrown under the bus"?

In our larger cities, as much as 50 percent of high school seniors are NOT graduating. WHAT is this putting--or, rather,  not putting--into our work force? What do the unskilled do other than swell the ranks of the unemployed? This time next year, as you hang your balls on the Christmas tree, will the current national unemployment rate of 6.5 percent have swelled to 9, 14, 18 percent?

In the 1930s, the Great Depression saw unemployment at 25 percent. But remember: people didn't have credit cards then. They didn't have mortgages costing them more than their houses were worth.

There is great hope that when it takes office January 20, 2009, the Obama Administraton will take necessary steps to undo the regulation---or lack thereof---that allowed us to get in this mess in the first place.

But watch the companies that in the last few months of 2008 began closing stores in hopes that the Christmas shopping season would throw them a lifeline. How many of them will make it? And just WHO will start renting all the available office space that will be made available by stores like Linens-and-Things, Circuit City, et cetera, going belly up?

When you have read, or heard, about people in 1929 leaping to their deaths from the spires of New York City, unable to cope with having lost everything in The Crash, does it not sound a little hard to believe, a little "over the top"?

Well, what's to happen if we, America, return to something similar? Don't kid yourself. It could already be underway.

Look at photographs of your parents and/or grandparents. Look at their faces. Do you not see a kind of dignity, a kind of resilience there? Those generations knew adversity. They lived through deprivation, doing without.

Do we younger generations have that Right Stuff? Can we live without our creature comforts? Have we not grown soft with a lifestyle we thought would always surround us, like a coccoon?

When Christmas is over and after the euphoria of welcoming a new administration to Washington has died down, what then?

In February 2009, when the government begins releasing figures of the ACTUAL damage done in the final quarter of 2008, what then?

Will "Recession" have dropped the "R" in favor a the big "D"?

Will we get across this unknown chasm intact? Will we, like our forebears, be able to COPE?

Or will we see a landscape littered with bodies, bodies of those who can't?

Well, we've bought our tickets. It's time to climb aboard. And be sure to pull the safety bar toward you until it locks.

The Ride starts now.

And, oh yes, have a very Merry Christmas. Please.