Crisis in crisis, 100 year storms and truly great depressions

Aside from the tiresome determination of what "inning" the credit crunch is in and how strong the "headwinds" are lets take a look at the Crisis of crisis.  What does that mean?

Well every media outlet needs a crisis to grab your attention in order to sell it.   

Crisis Definition:

1 a: the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever b: a paroxysmal attack of pain, distress, or disordered function c: an emotionally significant event or radical change of status in a person's life <a midlife crisis>

2: the decisive moment (as in a literary plot)

3 a: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially : one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome <a financial crisis> b: a situation that has reached a critical phase <the environmental crisis>

The media will hopefully burn through the "crisis" metaphor in a few months and like some burned out sports hack seek ever more bombastic metaphors and modifiers.  Look out for exploding banks, melting markets and ballistic prices. 

Interestingly we can expect to see more crisis because we can see further and care more now about the world. 

Imagine that some event  warrants the word crisis due to the fact it was a one in a 100 year event.  Our current media and shrinking world mean that instead of a looking at a local phenomenon and seeing a crisis once every 100 years, we can now look and pay attention to 100 different phenomenon.  Now that we can "see" farther and monitor more things, we are more likely to see more crisis.  The crisis of crisis is upon us.  To understand why economic crisis are far more common than the "that is so 6 minutes ago old news" media, I would recommend spending a considered period of time with a book on the matter, such as something from Kindelberger.

For those ranters and ravers who have a limited scope and equate everything bleak with the great depression, please do your homework.  It was mainly a deflationary environment which saw over a 25% contraction in GDP and reported unemployment of over 25% with an estimated shrinking of the money supply of an estimated 30%.  I am not advocating for or against this view of the future, but rather asking for a more considered use of the "like the great depression." catch phrase.