The Return of the Great Depression Review

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(More customer reviews)Admittedly, I didn't know what to expect from this book. I am a frequent reader of Vox Day's blog, and do find his views on a variety of topics both insightful and thought-provoking. However, having read a number of "Doom and Gloom" predictor books in the past, only to have the author's assertions not only fail to come true, but their methodology proven eminently suspect.
The first thing that stands out about this book is the delivery. It's fluid, conversational, and devoid of economic jargon that permeates most books on the subject. The book also exhibits none of the haughty arrogance displayed in books more suited for overworked graduate students of economics than public consumption. The graphs illustrate and illuminate rather than confound and confuse. There are ample anecdotes used to illustrate Day's points. Having read von Mises' "Theory of Money and Credit", "The Anti-Capitalist Mentality", "Socialism", and Rothbard's "America's Great Depression", "Return of the Great Depression" is about as easy to read and understand as Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson".
As far as the book's content goes, it's thoroughly researched and uses cites numerous sources to illustrate his points. Though Day is a student of the Austrian School of economics, the manner in which he methodically examines the historical events and the personalities involved displays no trace of any personal bias. That isn't to say that the book itself is devoid of his own viewpoint, rather, it is to say that he makes it tacitly clear where the line between the "science" of his deconstruction of history ends and where his personal opinions begin. His expertise on economic metrics and their application is exemplary. In my opinion, the portion of the book that discusses the utter uselessness of economic metrics published by the government alone should be photocopied and given out to any student enrolled in an undergraduate economics course.
In conclusion, whether you're an ardent student of economics, or merely the kind of person who wants to learn a little more about how we wound up in our current economic situation and how to decipher what the media pundits are really saying about unemployment, CPI's, and GDP, you will find this book quite enlightening.


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In this sophisticated yet readable book, Vox Day - one of the few economics writers to predict the current worldwide financial crisis - explains why it is likely to continue.

Day shows that the policies being pursued in Europe, Asia, and the United States are very similar to Japan's failed policies of the past twenty years and, therefore, doomed to similar results. According to Day, the economic theories behind those policies are flawed and account for why most economists were unable to anticipate the recession or see that their expectations of an imminent recovery are incorrect. Day applies a different theory, the one he used to predict the current crisis, to show that the world is in the early stages of a massive economic contraction. Then he turns to the six scenarios presently envisioned by the world's leading economists and assesses which is most likely to unfold. As the title suggests, Day concludes that the most probable scenario is a Great Depression 2.0 that will be larger in scale and scope than that of the 1930s.

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