>>“The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximise the suffering.”
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>You really have to go back that far to find anything this bad. The huge bailout in the U.S., England nationalizing banks, the COUNTRY of Iceland going bust. One of the few places that isn't suffering is Eastern Europe, which is pretty strange.

Or maybe not. I'm not an expert, and I don't even have facts at hand, just a hunch: these countries didn't have the time to switch to services economy; they still have some production going on, and when the money turns funny, it's the commodities that keep the value. Actually, you see everybody trying to keep their stock (not stock, but stock - I mean, not funny papers, not weapon handle, not soup base, but their inventory, including livestock) in place. Bad money comes and goes, but a pound of rice is a pound of rice.

Of course, this can be squandered too - been there, saw that.