any specifics you would care to speak to? Again, just searching for data and max preparedness, not calling out anyone's particular government affiliation one way or the other as I'm rather agnostic when it comes to that.
As a former lexicographer, I'm well aware of what the definition is :)
unprecedented
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Also, you are neglecting that the great depression was a deflationary depression, which means the inflation adjusted drop was much less.
With respect to "unprecedented" I don't think any of your examples are very unprecedented, thus the princess bride reference.
Well, the US federal debt is not at its highest in terms of GDP, so it's not unprecedented. Highest was in 1945. And it's certainly well within historical worldwide examples standards.
While the specifics of Obamacare are new to the US, they're certainly not historically unprecedented, as several European countries use similar systems, such as Switzerland.
While the number of people on food assistance is higher than it's been since the program began in the 1960s, it's still a very tiny part of the economy, and as this was the worst recession since the program began, it's not unexpected. Also, food stamps as a portion of GDP is on the decline. See this graph:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=lBQThe specific inflation adjustment is seen on this graph (which is DJIA divided by CPI for the period 1928-1934)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=lBP Basically, one of the major causes of the depression was falling prices across the board, which resulted in a debt trap for many firms and households. But you have to take the stock market fall (which really was gigantic) into account in that broader context.
In 2008 we had a banking crisis which really did have the possibility of great depression round two. But we really have learned how to do monetary policy better now. And while it was a bad recession, the '08 crash and recession following are nowhere near how bad the 1929-45 depression was. Fiscal policy sucked, but it turns out that Congress and the President can neither fix the economy, nor really break it (well, they can break it if they really try, but they aren't -that- stupid). Monetary policy can break an economy though, and we had some awful monetary policy in the 20s and 30s.
It would suck beyond compare if we had another depression, but if you wanna know if you're prepared, run FIREcalc. It does historical modeling that includes the depression. If your FI plan scores 100%, it means you would have made it through.