A trillion is a thousand billion

A billion is a thousand million

A million is a thousand thousand

In all seriousness there are a lot of factors in WW2 that might be unproduceable and any or all of them could be involed in the recovery after the great depression.

1)  Forced Austerity.  Everything was rationed and their was a social stigma against spending.   As we had to put most of our production towards tanks, bombs, planes and bullets, this meant less cars, and pretty much everything.   Things like nylons and cans and such were rationed because the matierals were needed for the war.  Lots of consumer goods were price controlled, but were near impossible to find/keep in stock.

How this may have effected the economy - After WW2, suddenly this stuff was widely available.  It was like these products came out as new for the first time ever.   There were YEARS worth of demand for cars that built up, as the car companies were all making Tanks.  Not to mention people leaving the army wanting to live it up.

2) Defacto Forced investment.   Due to the forced Austerity, there was pretty much nothing to do with your money... except invest it. 

How this helped - People put this money in the economy and warbonds, and further increased value and spending after WW2.

3) Free Trade.   After WW2 there was suddenly a HUGE increase in free trade, as Europe Japan and China needed things rebuilt, and the US and other untouched countires could supply it. 

How this may have helped - Products had new markets.  The US in particular became a huge exporter.  Argueably this is when US culture took it's root

4) WW2 put the fear of god into people.  - WW2 was ascary.

How this may have helped - a huge war that made people afraid of "evil controlling the world" is a great reason to convince people to live in the now.   Espiecally when suddenly there are single bomb that can wipe out big cities.  

The main problem now is we are going though... unforced personal austerity. None of the stimulus in the world is going to work, because what money people do get, they use to pay their debts or to save.

The average inflation rate is low....

HOWEVER, inflation for food gas and the like is sky high.

Why? They're needs... well and the global food crisis.


What needs to happen in my opinion, is people getting used to the economy, all the debt to get cleared out people go bankrupt, and then people finally being relaxed and willing to spend. Essentially "Things aren't going to be like during the bubble when everything was golden and you seemingly couldn't lose." Then consumer spending will return.

All we may be doing now is delay that process while people spend more on food, rent and essentials while the supply of what's bought doesn't increase, meaning no worker increase. Eventually these people still may collapse to debt as well.

Preventing bankruptcies helps people. Merely delaying bankruptcies hurts people, because people who are forced to start over are now older.

Additionally, I'd guess, this means that stimulus money is just going to naturally settle to the top, as people pay off their debts, and such... not really leading to much increased investment at the moment, as people just sit and wait because there just isn't many situations where smart loans make sense.


Once everything does calm down and people get used to it... we may see a Post WW2 style boom. Or we may see a Carter era hyper inflation.

I'd bet on the second. If only because of WW2's unique factors.

If your high on the stimulus theory. It's important to note they didn't just increase the money supply. Government also just built private companies a ton of factories. It wasn't that they just increased demand artificially, they artificially increased production capabilities.... while bringing supply to zero.

As such, companies had a huge reason to keep more factories open then they would have normally. Due to having zero stock. Though production did slow, and slow and slow, and many factories were shuttered.

The downside though was it HUGELY increased our debt to GDP ratio. This was solved by explosive GDP growth, but it seems unlikely we'd have such a burst in us again.

I can't wait until it goes up to $100 million.

You mean bill gates great, great, grandson...

and literally give the government a tip, since at about that point 100 million dollars will probably be what the average person tips someone who makes your sandwich atsubway.

George Calin said it right, make the death penalty for all the accountants who launder money and see how fast crime goes down (In his case, drug dealers).

Well the joke that Carlin made was that you can't imprison drug dealers since they're not afraid.  If they were afraid they wouldn't be dealing drugs, nor are they afraid of death.  But, threaten their accountants and see if drug dealers will deal if they can't hide their money.  You'll cut drug traffic down.  So in this case, cut down on money laundering, and threaten the rich who do everything they can to avoid taxes and see how fast the debt will disappear.

What does this mean?  Literally, how does government buying its own bonds help?

The national debt, or rather the debt held by the federal government, can seem somewhat far removed from affecting the daily person. However, there are some figures that might put it into perspective, such as that the common baby, born today, will pay an average $13,425 toward state government debt. Read more here.