Anybody who says that this is, or is going to be, equivalent to the Great Depression clearly isn't paying attention. At the same time, an important fact to keep in mind is that we aren't at the worst point of this particular recession yet, so it's useless to be comparing statistics right now. This recession will certainly last longer than the one in '81-82, and numbers are probably going to continue getting worse. (It's still too early to see which will end up worse than the '81-82 statistics and which ones won't.) Recovery will probably take longer too. A lot of the problems contributing to our current recession are more complicated than those in previous ones, and will require more intensive fixes in order to avoid long-term damage to the economy--and in that sense, it has more in common with the Great Depression than, say, the recession of the early 80s. But they'll be thematically similar, not similar in degree.
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