David Merkel calls it a depression

Recent links

• Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down - NYTimes.com
  No one knows how bad things have become, though it is clear that tens of thousands have left, real estate prices have crashed and scores of Dubai’s major construction projects have been suspended or canceled. But with the government unwilling to provide data, rumors are bound to flourish, damaging confidence and further undermining the economy.
• Soros: "Bad Bank" for Troubled Assets Is Bad Idea
  "That (the "bad bank" proposal) will help relieve the situation, but it will not be sufficient to turn it around," Soros said during a live interview at the Davos economic conference in Switzerland. Instead, Soros said he would create a "good bank" and re-capitalize the good assets.
  
  He admitted his alternative plan is not likely to get support because it too closely approaches nationalization. "The political will to do that is not there," he said.
• China’s Economy Faces 2009 ‘Hard Landing,’
  China faces an economic “hard landing” and the risk of social unrest with growth slowing to 6 percent or less this year, the weakest pace since 1990, Fitch Ratings said.
• The Start-Ups We Don’t Need — The American, A Magazine of Ideas
  It also takes a lot of entrepreneurs to create lasting jobs. To get one business employing at least one person ten years from now, we need 43 entrepreneurs to begin the process of starting a company. And how many jobs will that startup have, on average, ten years after it was founded? The answer is nine. In short, 43 people have to try to start companies so that we can have nine jobs a decade from now. That’s not the spectacular yield that you might expect if you read the press reports about the job creation of start-ups.
• Econbrowser: Federal Reserve balance sheet
  The bottom line is that Bernanke has made a gamble with something approaching 2 trillion. If the gamble wins, taxpayers owe nothing. If the gamble loses, taxpayers are committed to borrow a sum equal to any losses and start making interest payments on it.