I was having a conversation with my friend last night when it came to me, this over sized recession is more than it appears.  As we boomers have been told since the 1970s, we are going to create a big problem for the economy when we retire because the workforce will fall to a ratio of something of the order of 1 worker for every 3 people in the country (I do not recall when I first heard this, or if this is the correct ratio, but this is the nature of the "productivity" problem).  This ratio is considered unsustainable.

The obvious effect of major public policies has been to force more people into the workforce (social security retirement age incrementing up does this directly, social security privatization would create winners-with good investments-who could retire early, and losers-with bad investments- who may never retire).  But all of these have been weak tea.

That brings us to this economic collapse... It is going to create a restructuring of the economy because of the productivity problem.  It may, in fact, be part of the productivity problem... Aging boomers who realized that they were going to have meager retirements took out easy equity loans on their homes to build up their portfolios so that could retire early... a baby boom improvised (economic) explosive device... now it has exploded blowing a hole in our economy....

The boomers can explode again if we don't fix this thing!