Michael Kinsley: The Ponzi Economy

They keep telling us that this is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But there is at least one difference: in the Great Depression, nobody needed to be told they were in a depression. Today, except for relatively few investment bankers and somewhat more middle-class homeowners, who would guess that things are so dire? Life goes on, reasonably normally. Maybe it's easier to get a cab in New York City--a reliable real-life indication of an economic downturn--but then maybe the effect of the financial crisis is canceled out by the effect of that other crisis, the one about energy. Now, there is a crisis you can sink your teeth into. But this? It's like some terrible, ominous dream where you're being pursued by this huge, ugly, horrible ... what, exactly?