But once again, that's why this is hacker news, and not economic news: our area of expertise is not in economics, with a few exceptions (that certainly do not include me).
You may not like that someone thinks its a depression and not a recession. You may not like that someone thinks its 3 years, not 1 or 5. But hey, their guess is as good as the "pros" at this point.
And noone can explain the little raise in the dollar the last week. These little hiccups are almost unpredictable in a complex global economic realignment.
So you may not agree with certain words such as "recession" vs. "depression" or someone's guess as to how long it will last or even if the U.S. will ever recover. But I think the non-quantitative predictions in the article are solid nonetheless.
What I don't like is people pretending it's anything but a wild guess.
You're right that the discussion of how the downturn will affect software and open source is better. That's because it's something Nat clearly knows a great deal about. He should have stuck with that.
In practice, it is possible to engineer a short-term economic boom by increasing the money supply, so the supply and demand of dollars work against each other and it is impossible to say where its value will go. In the long term, the purchasing power of the dollar has dropped constantly since it went off the gold standard. However, nominal income and wealth has increased faster than the dollar's decline, so our living standards have increased.
I'm not an expert, so it's possible I am missing some big factor. However, I do have some training in the field, so I hope I am more right than wrong.
I'm no expert either, and I appreciated that you clarified my views a bit. That's pretty much in line with my feelings about the effects this sort of action can have on an already suffering economy.
The bailout doesn't go into effect for at least a month.
And as far as expertise goes, your website could use a few Exceptions ("printDate() is not defined") - sorry, couldn't resist.
That doesn't mean it can't have an effect on current prices. Market actors are capable of anticipating future market events. What is your take on Osborne Computer? Was it simply a coincidence that the market value of its then-current computer-model dropped when an improved model was announced?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
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Is it simply coincidence -- rather than market anticipation -- that every time a corporate buyout at a specific price is announced, the stock price of the target company instantly jumps to, and flatlines at, the buyout price?
Well, not literally; capital losses will likely cause serious deflation if the stocks really crash. But I don't see how a government pumping funny money into the market on this scale can do anything but devalue its currency severely.