Are we doomed?

The facts are staggering. We have the highest unemployment rate in the nation (9.3 percent in October!) and climbing. The auto industry is on its death bed, yet it commands so little respect that Congress has blithely refused to bail it out, even though the collapse of GM will severely compound a national recession, cripple Michigan's economy, bankrupt state and local government, and ruin what remains of our morale. Our most powerful congressman lost his chairmanship this week (which, by the way, I support) and the once-proud UAW is ready to sacrifice the jobs bank in order to keep any jobs at all.

This is a worst-case scenario, and it makes one wonder -- will we lead the way with the first single-state depression? I sure hope not. Just see this quote from the Boston Globe predicting what a national depression would look like:

Some parts of the country, especially the Rust Belt, could see a wholesale depopulation as the last remnants of the American heavy-manufacturing base die out.

"There will be some cities like Detroit that in a real depression could just become ghost towns," says Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard economist and member of the National Bureau of Economic Research committee that declares recessions.

The collapse of the auto industry will hit hard enough. I can't bear to wonder, like Paul Krugman, whether Bush will sink us as low as Hoover did before the inauguration of the next President.