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Comment by tybris | Hacker News Reader

At least the banks are back in business, which is unfortunately essential to recovery. First order of business is to force them to severely lower their margins. Mortgage rates need to be heavily regulated to prevent further disasters on the housing market. Wall street needs to be regulated into oblivion. As long as they can afford to give out a single bonus they can handle more regulation to stabilize the system.

To be honest, I think the recovery will be surprisingly fast. Economic cycles are not what they used to be. At this point in history our economic infrastructure has become so sophisticated that within no time you will have an dramatic amount of new business starting to carry the weight of the economy.

It's like a forest fire. First there is the pain, then there is the barren wasteland, but then you see the new light opens up the seeds and the ashes of the old forest feed the young trees. A new forest appears in no time.

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"To be honest, I think the recovery will be surprisingly fast"

How? Our manufacturing sector has been taken apart in the last 20 years. A large amount of baby boomers are retiring now, cashing out 401k/IRA/social security/medicare.

Our manufacturing sector has been taken apart in the last 20 years.

I'm American, and I'll say that this is a typical American thing to say. We live in a world economy now. Certain parts of the world specialize in certain sectors. We can come out of a recession without depending on manufacturing. What you're saying is the equivalent of saying that a place like Silicon Valley can never escape a recession because they don't have a huge manufacturing base like, say, Pittsburgh.

Sure I agree...we manufacture debt, and the other countries buy them. Until they don't, since the whole world's making less money.

Yes, we make game/tv/movie/porn/internet. But notice that Asia is notorious at pirating them.

Okay. I was trying to have a serious conversation, but I see that you've decided to take things elsewhere.

I'm not being facetious; read 'the walmart effect' on how walmart has encouraged the dismantling of our manufacturing sector. So what else do we produce? remember that we get our oil from middle east, our manufactured goods from Asia, our commodities from South America, cheap services from India, etc. Our GDP in the last several years were largely propped up by financial/construction sectors growth, which has mostly disappeared now.

Just to name a few of the things we are producing in Ohio: solar power technology, advanced polymer technology, medical advancements, and biotechnology. Production no longer requires only smoke stacks.

From a thread down: "Just to name a few of the things we are producing in Ohio..."

Yes, but in this worldwide recession, people only buy things that they need. Those things you mentioned are all advanced (want, not need) products, which has dropped severely in demand. Things we need (oil, cheap stuff, cheap services) are mostly manufactured by other countries.

Things we need (oil, cheap stuff, cheap services) are all manufactured by other countries.

The middle part of the country grows a large portion of what we eat. I can't state everything everyone needs, but food is certainly one of those things. On top of that, I don't see how you can say medical advancements are something we don't need.

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