Writes Kevin Depew: “Chaos and fear never sleep. This morning the first news story I read was a piece from the Los Angeles Daily News about police threatening to beat down and arrest any “disorderlies” trying to get their money out of a failed IndyMac (IMB) bank branch in Pasadena, CA. Apparently, after being turned away Monday, customers began lining up at 1:30 a.m. the next morning to take out any cash they had in excess of the $100,000 maximum insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The scene was reportedly emotional and tense. At another IndyMac branch in Encino, the police were called in after line jumpers threatened to turn an ordinary bank run into a full-on riot.

“Yes, it’s here. Welcome to the Depression. No, don’t drop whatever it is you’re doing. Don’t get up. It’s not going anywhere. It will wait. It’s just going to sit over here in the corner and read a magazine while you do whatever it is you need to do.

“A Depression doesn’t run hot and fierce like some crazed meth burner. A Depression is methodical, purposeful, patient. It will build a shelter out of tree branches and newspaper, light a small, well-contained campfire and wait you out, brother. While you feed on the empty calories of denial and popcorn, it will quietly gather shards of broken dreams and fashion them into a terrible weapon of blunt force reality.

“It’s a hell of a thing to call this day and age the next Depression. It’s dangerous tinfoil hat territory inhabited mostly by screeching lunatics and volatile nutjobs. But by the time they get squeezed out by reputable folks the whole gig will be up, the circus will have left town.

“But how can this be? To understand the mechanics of this, the nature of it, let’s look back at the last Great Depression.” Read the rest. And thanks to all those who sent this to me.