Diet for a New Depression

Lately, I've had the chance to get out in the evening in several states.

I usually try to find a local place where I won't get my head caved in, or, lacking a clean and friendly restaurant or grill in town, I'll opt out for -- yes--an Applebee's or Chilies or Outback

Mostly, lately, they've been empty.

People who aren't traveling, who live in the places I have had to go, large and small, are back home eating, it seems.

Oh, there are some exceptions, but there is a lot of booth space in many restaurants.

People aren't feeling so good, though. The stock market has been on a roller coaster and is trending downward. Nobody is sure of a bottom. Terry Savage, a well known financial advisor, published a column today that tells us that the stock market and the commodities market are pricing for a depression. She actually used the "D" word. I'm surprised. Most financial writers have avoided using that term, because it conjures up some of the worst times in American and world history. You've seen the pictures: shell shocked men shuffling along who were employed yesterday; gaunt women with three for four children huddled around them, all running ragged. All of it very... depressing.

Few people alive today were adults when the Great Depression gripped this country and the world. The dark winds blew in on an October day in 1929 -- Black Tuesday-- when the big party of the 1920's ended. There had been a bubble then, too. New technologies (radio and telephone) were riding an upward crest of use and investment. Housing speculation and land speculation was happening in a number of places -- Hello Miami Beach. The stock market went only up during the 1920's, because everybody, including the elevator operator, bought on margin. When the buyers ran out, the brokers called in the the chips, and some speculators dived out of windows.

Herbert Hoover caught most of the blame for the Great Depression, but in truth he was only President at the beginning. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was swept into office in 1932, because he promised that happy days would soon be returning. They didn't. The sun didn't shine on America or the world until well into the 1950's, when the Great Depression was a black memory and World War II was finally accepted as an historical event.

FDR gets credit for attitude. In the early days of the Great Depression, when people here were actually starving (an not just unable to afford that fourth Happy Meal), that we had only fear itself to fear. He was right about that, but wrong about most of the rest of what he tried to do.

He and his "brain trust", which consisted mainly of academics, sprinkled and alphabet soup of government organizations across the country. Some of the better known ones are the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). His thinking was that government involvement in the economy --"priming the pump"-- would help to spark the rest of the economy. In truth, as author Amity Shales points out in her book on the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man, the intense government involvement actually took what was a panic in 1929 and created a situation that caused distrust in the markets and in commerce that kept money literally at home and under mattresses for more than a decade. The forgotten man was everyman, every tax payer.

There are many parallels now. We have had a real estate bubble and its bad paper is floating (or sinking) all over the world. We have had easy money, with real interest rates close to zero under Alan Greenspan's watch as Federal Reserve Chief, and we have had incredible government spending on all levels. A witches brew, to be sure.

The world is teetering on the edge of something. Nobody is quite sure what it might be -- yet. Most economic talkers avoid using the "GD" words. Savage is really the first I've seen who is not on the fringe who is postulating on some very real hard times to come.

I'm not a true believer on her position. Yet, trillions of dollars of wealth has disappeared in sinking markets and with government IOU's. We have a contender for President who has started to assemble a "brain trust", with the first member being former Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volker. This contender, Barrack Obama, has already told us we have nothing to fear. He makes no apologies for his position of an interventionist government. He believes the Federal Government is on the way and it is here to help. His opponent, in all fairness, believes about the same. John McCain wants the government to buy all bad mortgages and somehow make them good. I still don't understand that one.

So we need a diet. We are getting one served. A diet of lowered expectations, lower house values, lower retirement funds and...well... it's getting to be depressing.

I have a cookbook. I'm not much of a cook, but these were left over from my mother. She got them from my great Aunt Helen. She was a young woman during the Great Depression. It's called the "World's Modern Cook Book and Kitchen Guide for the Modern Woman". I am not the modern woman, obviously. Or even the modern man. This book was for the modern woman of 1932, the publication date. Some of the instructions are from the time: "a pinch of this and a dash of that". Simpler times.

I figure I better make like the millions of missing and not go to any restaurants. With the help of this book I'll figure out forty ways to cook a potato. I may need to. Business is not good. There are no guarantees. I know quite a few who have lost jobs are are very close.

My first recipe will be for lunch. Potato soup easy:

Peel and slice one potato in very thin slices. Peel and slice a small onion in thin slices. Cook rapidly in 2 cups of boiling water for 15 minutes. Add 3 cups of think cream or rich milk and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Heat. Add 2 tablespoons of butter. Dust with pepper. Sprinkle each portion with minced parsley. Fresh min leaves, finely chopped, may be substituted for the parsley. Serves 4.

I'm hoping I don't have to keep any Depression Diet going, but all this talk makes me nervous in the stomach.

Bon appitite!