PEOPLE everywhere are talking about the Great Depression, which followed the October 1929 stock market crash and lasted until the United States entered World War II. It is a vivid story of year upon year of despair.

This Depression narrative, however, is not merely a story about the past: It has started to inform our current expectations.

According to the Reuters-University of Michigan Survey of Consumers earlier this month, nearly two-thirds of consumers expected that the present downturn would last for five more years. President Obama, in his first press conference, evoked the Depression in warning of a “negative spiral” that “becomes difficult for us to get out of” and suggested the possibility of a “lost decade,” as in Japan in the 1990s.

He said Congress needed to pass an economic stimulus package — as it ultimately did — to prevent this calamity.

The attention paid to the Depression story may seem a logical consequence of our economic situation. But the retelling, in fact, is a cause of the current situation — because the Great Depression serves as a model for our expectations, damping what John Maynard Keynes called our “animal spirits,” reducing consumers’ willingness to spend and businesses’ willingness to hire and expand. The Depression narrative could easily end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy. …

Economic View
Can Talk of a Depression Lead to One?
Looks as though we’re about to find out.