One of my favorite quotes goes something like “History doesn’t repeat itself – at best it sometimes rhymes”

On this premise, I note a certain rhyme with the history of the Great Depression.

First we start with the Lesser Depression stock market crash of 2008, followed by a shrinking economy and high unemployment.  Next we have a Democratic president coming to office to introduce a stimulus program to rescue the economy.  In 1937 we have that president talked into trying to balance the budget before the economy had fully recovered.  The resulting second dip in the depression may have helped to bring on World War II which finally provided the economic stimulus to finish getting us out of the depression.

If the rhyme continues, can we expect World War III?

When I contemplate this question, I have a hard time imagining who will be on the two sides of the war (if there are actually only two sides to the next war).

The economies of the USA, Europe, Russia, China, and India seem to me to be too intertwined to find these countries on opposite sides.

All of these countries are having problems with opposition from Islamic dissidents, either within their own countries or from other parts of the world.  I could conceive of them thinking they have a common enemy to blame the economic problems on.  (You do see the rhyme of blaming your troubles on a religious/ethnic population to cover up your own complicity in the problems?) I would say that there is not enough military power in the Islamic nations to make much of a serious fight against the developed countries named above.  So except for nuclear weapons, it probably won’t be much of a war.

I do see a world-wide conflict of interest between right-wingers in all countries and the middle and lower classes in those countries.  It is hard to conceive of there being a world-wide civil war.   If it were to happen, it might at least be a preventative of nuclear escalation as the two warring sides are too intermixed to make it possible for one side to use nuclear weapons and avoid the fall-out.

Do you think I should start an on-line pool for people to figuratively bet on how they see the sides forming in this upcoming war?  Would any of my readers be interested in putting forth their proposals for what the sides will be?

August 12, 2011

My publish date of this blog post beat the publish date of the article Serious People Are Starting To Realize That We May Be Looking At World War III by four days.