Authored by Michael Lebowitz and Jack Scott via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The first article in this series, Part 1 Debt, details the massive accumulation of debt and how it will handicap economic growth in the future.

Debt is but one crucial economic factor to consider when assessing economic growth. There are three other "D" problems worth considering- Depression, Demographics, and De-globalization.

To assess where the economy is going, you first must know where it is. With that in mind, the focus of this article is depression.

Visualizing a Depression

Will the current economic slump be called a recession or depression? No one knows for sure because there is no precise definition of depression. That said, recessions tend to be relatively brief periods of economic contraction – 18 months or less. Depressions, like that experienced in the 1930s, extend much longer.  What we do know now is that recent economic data is unlike anything seen since the Great Depression.