House of Pain

Depressing and likely.

But if the technical challenge of depression prevention has rudely announced itself unsolved, the current crisis has also reawakened a long-obscured, but far more profound debate about the very nature of cyclical capitalism. That is: Are economic contractions, like the one we're currently experiencing, a good thing?

You won't hear this question asked in most mainstream political discussion of the crisis. It would be career suicide for any elected official to suggest that the widespread stress, misery and heartache being wreaked by the precipitous contraction were are a good thing. But scratch the surface a bit and you'll find a surprisingly vibrant school of thought, one that reaches back all the way back to the Great Depression, that holds precisely this view.