Welcome to the world, baby boy.

My son, my firstborn child, was born yesterday morning. I had to laugh at the timing: he came right at the beginning of another Great Depression. According to some, we're headed toward some severe economic down times, with a probability of what Greenspan sought to head off: deflation.

Honestly, we've seen the deflation hit the housing market--hard--already. We shouldn't be surprised to see its ugly head popping up elsewhere.

Deflation was one of the two real kickers in the Great Depression. The other, as I've said before, was Hoover's failing policies carried out to their logical extreme by FDR, who has long been known, wrongly, for pulling this country out of the Great Depression. As I've linked before, it was some of his policies that made it last as long as it did.

I think the bailout bill which was just railroaded through is going to do for us what Hoover's and Roosevelt's policies did in the thirties, if not worse with the current loads of unsecured credit card and other debt that most Americans carry.

Between domestic issues--the economy, the social issues that've split the nation, energy policy, etc.--and foreign issues in the Middle East, Europe, and the resurgent Russia, we're looking at some of the more interesting times that any of us have seen in living memory, or studied in history. And when I say "interesting times," I mean in the ancient Chinese curse sense of the term.

Welcome to the world, son. It's going to be an interesting ride, and I'm sorry we had such bad timing in bringing you into it.