Global crisis just a 'blip'

begin quote from: 

http://news.yahoo.com/global-crisis-just-blip-freakonomics-author-041740365.html

Levitt, known for his startling and provocative observations about human behaviour, has comforting words for those alarmed about Europe's debt crisis and the sluggish US economy.

"It doesn't feel like 'The End'," said Levitt, 44, a leading professor of economics at the University of Chicago, who was on a lightning 48-hour trip to India for a speaking engagement.

"The US economy is even growing a little," Levitt noted, referring to a two percent expansion in the last quarter.

In fact, "economies around the world have grown so much since World War Two, -- unless there's something horrific on the horizon which I don't see -- people will look back on these days as nothing more than a blip," he told AFP. end quote.

If you haven't read Freakonomics you should, because it is both very informative and very entertaining. I haven't read Super Freakonomics yet but after reading this article I might. I think Levitt's point is well taken. I have always shared his view that the whole Terrorist problem was a part of fund raising for our government secret agencies and the U.S. and world military industrial complex just like President  Eisenhower warned us about when he left office. He was right because it has either bankrupted the western world or almost has (one or the other) with nothing much to show for it other than Iraq's democracy and maybe Libya and the Arab Spring. I'm not sure how many Americans or Europeans would say that the last 10 years of wars was justified. The biggest beneficiaries of these wars probably were companies like Halliburton and others.

However, as things go since World War II the last few years remind me the most of 1979 to about 1985 when I had to use my savings to buy land and build a house for myself and my family to live in because I couldn't afford to pay rent for my family because there just wasn't enough work then just like now. Saving a lot in rent during that time allowed my family to survive those times and still be relatively happy. So, I sort of see these times in many ways like those times and don't take them quite as seriously as many younger people because I had already seen oil prices skyrocket and had seen what that combined with 10% or more unemployment did to the U.S. already in the 1980s. In the 1980s it created the Militia movements and extreme survivalists with most of them buying Assault weapons and testing them in the woods. I think the change to paint ball guns is much better if you know what I mean.

But "Yes" in the overall scheme of things once we get past 2012 hopefully without too many religious people offing themselves because of their ideas about the "end of the world" I think things might return to a more normal reality by 2013 or 2014, hopefully.

begin 2nd quote from Same Article:

"We're certainly not looking at something like the Great Depression," added Levitt, who co-authored the best-selling Freakonomics and its much-acclaimed sequel SuperFreakonomics.

Levitt, who revels in the tag of a "rogue economist" challenging conventional wisdom, said people were also far too worried about terrorism.

While governments across the world pump huge resources into tackling terrorism, it is only a "minor problem in the larger scheme of things", he argued.

"We can't ignore the fact that many more people die in car crashes each year -- in fact it really puts to shame (the casualty toll from) terrorist attacks.

"It is only our reaction to terrorism that is so extreme that it makes the problem look bigger than it actually is," said Levitt, who in 2003 won the John Bates Clark Medal as the most influential economist in America under the age of 40.