The Second Great Depression [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The Second Great Depression

This is a frightening book. It shows how massive consumer debt triggered this second depression, which started in 2007/2008.

The exuberance of the overheated stock market of the 90s caused consumers to stop saving and go into debt. Then, the dramatic drop in mortgage rates enabled people to refinance their homes and go even further into debt. People were no longer living on what they could afford; instead they were living the lifestyle they thought they deserved, costs be damned!

With payments increasing, savings rates near zero, and debt at its maximum; many people were pushed over their debt limit, having homes foreclosed or going into bankruptcy. Others are heeding the warnings and reducing spending, causing a dramatic slowing of the economy.

To survive this depression, savings should be in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, and the stock market should only be reentered after it drops 68% from its early 2008 level. Included charts show required savings for retirement in this environment.

In this depression, the United States will be brought to its knees. But not unlike the mythical bird Phoenix that dies in flames and is then reborn out of its own ashes, the United States will also be reborn. However, it will be a poorer and less arrogant country that emerges from its own ashes.

"This is a book that anyone - young, old or anywhere in between - should read and study. It is superbly researched and thoughtfully written. The first half of the book is a window into the future and the second half is an outstanding guideline for facing that future. This is the most important book I have read."

Christopher Welker,
General Manager of Technology
for a Fortune 100 Company

About the Author

Warren Brussee spent 33 years at GE as an engineer, plant manager, and engineering manager. He earned his engineering degree at Cleveland State University and attended Kent State towards his EMBA. The author has written two other books, Statistics for SIX SIGMA Made Easy and All About Six Sigma.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Booklocker.com, Inc. (March 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591136881
• ISBN-13: 978-1591136880
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #461,312 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #80 in	Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Debt & Deficits
  #83 in	Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Public Finance

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

99 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars People who believe that consumers can over-spend forever will not like this book., January 8, 2006

By	Book Baron - See all my reviews

This book has three parts. In the first part, the author uses government data and charts to show how the consumer is building up debt at a rapid pace. The author believes that this can not go on forever, and eventually the consumer will have to slow his spending, which will dramatically slow the economy. If you don't believe this conclusion, and the data that supports it, then the rest of the book is meaningless.

The second part of the book states that as the economy slows, the stock market will drop. The author uses several methods to estimate how far the market will drop, including Yale Professor Irving Fisher's formula that uses dividends for deriving real market value.

The third part gives conservative savings calculations for retirement. These calculations differ from those in most books because they don't include stock market gains, and they assume that Social Security retirement benefits in the future will be delayed until age 70.

I liked this book a lot because it backed up all its conclusions with data; sometimes almost too much data to digest. But the inclusion of this data, the focus on consumer spending, and the willingness of the author to extrapolate as to when the consumer debt limit will be reached, separates it from other books predicting generic economic problems `some time in the future'.

I was surprised to read the very negative rating of this book by an earlier reviewer. The fact that the author graduated from Cleveland State University in engineering and was a former GE Engineering Manager is right near the front of the book, so I don't understand the surprise. This book is very data oriented, and the author's earlier books on Six Sigma seem to validate that he has expertise in data analysis. As for not suggesting selling stocks short, which has a risk theoretically greater than the amount invested; this is consistent with the author's apparent conservative approach for riding out the first half of the predicted depression. I, personally, would consider gold more strongly as an option; but again, the author is very conservative.

(...)

68 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting read, March 23, 2006

By	Scott Meredith "SeeOtter" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It's a scary book, but maybe not half as scary as it should/could have been. The publishers faced the usual quandry - how to tune just the right balance of fear (get their eyeballs) leavened by hope (you'll be OK). A razor's edge for doomster types of books.

But I'm not saying this book is unrealistic. While the author does devote a few pages to cinematic doom stuff, it felt to me as though the scary "depression" theme was grafted at a late stage onto a fairly run-of-the-mill book on conservative investing strategies and retirement financial planning.

What's WB's limited imagination apparently does not extend to are things such as Peak Oil, World War III, a pandemic of Extinction Level Event magnitude, runaway climate change, and so on - though I'm not saying that he should have explicitly addressed all that in a single book on his single subject.

My point is that he spends so many pages on very detailed calculations and tables around mild stuff like how to re-invest in the market, how to get an extra percentage point here and their in your retirement savings - all the while apparently oblivious to the strong possibility that a depression of the magnitude he envisions could well trigger or be grotesquely compounded by any of the above singularities and more - it would then be a total bonfire of the certainties. Thus his mildly scolding, timidly middle-class schoolmarm'ish tone didn't always seem to match the content of his message.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Second Great Depression, March 13, 2006

By	James D. Clifford (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While Brussee's suggested defense against a predicted depression may be a little too conservative for some readers, the data presentation, even by itself, makes a strong case for depression. Everyone needs to move their investments to a place where they can quickly react to any event that triggers stronger inflation or a consistently falling dollar. Without knowing what's in this book, most folks will not be ready or armed emotionally to avoid getting hurt.