Here they come. At the end of 2008, all the social and personal signs of a real depression were absent. They are making themselves present now. The suicides, the frauds, the job losses…they’re all on the front pages of the papers now. If 2008 was the year of the financial crisis, 2009 will be the year it got personal.

All around the world this Friday, investors are wringing their hands. The papers are full of the cause. More job losses. Slower growth. Bankruptcies. Debt.  There. Don’t you feel better now?

Sometimes you have to just stand back and admire the extremes a real bubble can produce. What you have now, as Bill explained last night at the Doomer’s Ball, is the last greatest bubble of them all, the bubble in U.S. bonds. It’s reaching staggering levels.

Stuck for Christmas gift ideas? Why not try a barrel of oil? You can get one for around US$40 these days. That’s 54% lower than this time last year and 72% below the price on July 14th ($145.16).

Selling stuff you bought with borrowed money is a process that’s mostly been confined to the financial markets in 2008. But now we see the behavior migrating into the economy. At the household level, a collective sense of thrift is beginning to set in. People are selling what they don’t need to raise cash.

Not much. The world keeps turning. And the world economy keeps falling apart. Here in Australia, shares of port and rail outfit Asciano (AIO) fell off the table after a Citigroup analyst changed his valuation of the company and moved it from “buy” to “sell.” Asciano is down 93% from its all time high and was down nearly 60% yesterday before going into a trading halt.

We are not going to see the world’s best businesses this cheap for a long time, says Dan Denning. He says it’s not hard to imagine another round of global rate cuts and a massive stimulus package in the US. And then there is the ‘Obama effect’. In other words, if you don’t want to own these equities now, why bother being in the market at all?

You know it’s a real financial crisis when capitalists are being told what to do by a bunch of socialists and communists. But these are the times we live in. Ironic and moronic.

Dan Denning says the bailout bill that just passed Congress is a recipe for “massive inflation.” In 1931, during the Great Depression, it was a different story. Back then, treasury secretary Andrew Mellon told Herbert Hoover: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system.”

Let’s be clear about what we think the last two days mean: the Fed and Treasury are worried about the viability of the banking system. Why? Well, another bank was taken over in the U.S. (Wachovia by Citibank) and four European banks were effectively nationalised.