My father was born during the Great Depression and he often told me tales of having to sell loaves of bread at age 9 to help make money for the family.  I saw the NBC news last night and I saw a story about an organization that helps feed hungry kids around the world; the only catch was that the delivery it was making was in the United States, not some forgotten 3rd or 4th world country:

ELKHART, Ind. – In this job-starved city where President Barack Obama last month made a public appeal for his economic stimulus plan, hundreds of volunteers — and an agency that specializes in handing out food — worked together Tuesday to feed 5,200 hungry families.

Roughly 300 local volunteers worked with Feed the Children to distribute more than $2.1 million worth of food at Concord Mall as part of the nonprofit relief organization’s “Feeding Americans Emergency Caravan.”

The caravan of semi-trailers is visiting small cities and towns across America hit hard by the economic crisis. No area in Indiana has been hit harder than Elkhart County, where the jobless rate skyrocketed to 18.3 percent in January.

There are also tent cities springing up everywhere:

A tent city is burgeoning in Sacramento, Calif., prompting local officials to consider whether such an encampment should be made permanent, with plumbing and all.

The primitive settlement sits in the shadow of the state capitol and is home to about 300 people who have no toilets or running water, creating unsanitary conditions that advocacy groups worry could promote diseases like cholera. With the downturn in the economy and more working-class people losing their jobs and their homes, the tent city is expanding.

So I started thinking what I would tell my  grand kids   (should I ever have any) about the Crash of ‘09.  I can imagine some teacher already asking the kids to “interview” their parents or grandparents and ask them to explain or describe the hardships from the Great Crash of ‘09.

We’re not anywhere near the bottom yet as job losses continue to mount but the early observations were this:

  • No one believed that a crash was coming, they all thought real estate and the good times would last forever.
  • People who spoke out about excesses were ridiculed, called “doom and gloomers” or “pessimistic sky-is-falling chicken littles” or other names.
  • Everyone thought buying the Dow at 12,000 from 14,000 was a great buy.  They said it was a great buy at 11,000 then 10,000 then 9,000 then it wasn’t a great buy anymore not even when it went down to 6,000.

And I suspect I may add this to the commentary:

  • No one believed there would be a run on the banks but that came later.
  • No one believed there would be food riots but there were many later and many got killed.
  • No one believed there would be military internment camps inside the United States holding US citizens but the prisons had become too full.
  • No one believed we would ever get out of the mess but we eventually did and it made us all better and stronger people.

But I’ll tell them to get the full story, start reading here.