About the only think keeping our economic *nose* above the waterline here I think, is that we have sold tons of Uranium to Russia, and are selling more to China. That and our mineral exports have been booming the past couple years. New mines are being opened up monthly. There has been some talk of stopping sales of uranium to Russia (mainly to pacify the environmentalists and nations that really don’t want Russia to get stockpiles of uranium, even low grade), but I seriously cannot see that happening. One thing we have lot’s of, is uranium.

Going to be a bumpy ride. Hopefully, it won’t be straight over a cliff. Time, as always, will tell.

Simply printing money without addressing the core problems — the overvalued housing market and the bankrupt mortgage banking system — is the least effective way to handle the situation. The Fed printed a *lot* of money yesterday. But as a temporary stopgap until the real problem can be addressed — it is completely understandable.

One thing to understand: While the current actions being taken by the Fed and by Treasury are unprecedented, they are not unplanned-for. Bernanke spent twenty years studying the Great Depression and is one of the world’s foremost experts on the economics of the Great Depression. He has been writing papers on how to handle various situations that could lead to a Great Depression since he was a youngster in grad school. Some of the solutions he’s proposed in the past have been politically impossible until a crisis made them possible. But right now, everything is becoming politically possible because the alternative is pretty damned ghastly.

Finally: Yes, this is all unprecedented. But I will say this. I’ve studied the deflationary spiral that caused the collapse of the U.S. economy in the time period 1930-1932, and while I’m no Bernanke, I have a pretty good understanding for a non-economist of exactly what happened and why. And from where I’m sitting, Bernanke and Treasury are doing maybe not a perfect job, but they are doing what has to be done and they pretty much know what they’re doing (gasp! competent Bush appointees! Will wonders never cease!). Yes, it’s going to be bad. The past ten years of housing appreciation are going to be *gone*. We’re going to be back to 1998 housing prices. A lot of people are going to see their equity wiped out. That is a *lot* of money evaporating out of the economy, thus why the Fed is printing so much money right now. But unless it’s done, and done pretty much in this way, it’s just going to extend the problem on and on and on and the longer it goes on, the more the probability of the nightmare 1930-1932 scenario with banks collapsing and a deflationary spiral bringing the economy grinding to a halt. This is nasty medicine, but the alternative — the 1930-1932 scenario — is all too possible if it doesn’t go down the way the Fed and Treasury are talking.

One thing I will say — if the banks and the mortgage markets aren’t effectively nationalized by putting them under direct federal supervision, this will not work long-term because they will just start doing the same stupid shit again. Which is one reason I damn well hope Obama wins in the fall. Because if McCain wins, the chances of that happening is nil, and we’ll be right back in this same situation in ten years.