Europe's Austerity-Fueled Depression Keeps Getting Worse

Europe's central bank just slashed interest rates and launched emergency stimulus measures -- but six years too late, and not enough to counter the austerity that has Europe in a worse mess than the Great Depression.

The European Central Bank surprised markets on Thursday by cutting its target short-term interest rate to basically zero. ECB also plans to buy a bunch of bonds to push longer-term rates lower, too -- an echo of the U.S. Federal Reserve's many rounds of "quantitative easing," used in recent years to goose the economy (or at least the stock market).

Paul Krugman: Romney Victory Could Mean 'Double-Dip Recession'

If Mitt Romney is elected president, then the economy may experience another recession, according to Paul Krugman.

"I think there's a real chance that he'll manage to pursue a policy in the first couple of years that simultaneously blows up the deficit and depresses the economy," the Nobel Prize-winning economist said on HuffPost Live Wednesday. "Tax cuts for the rich, who won't spend them, and slash spending for the poor and the middle class, who will be forced to cut back. And so we end up managing to have a simultaneous deficit explosion and double-dip recession."

Eurozone crisis signals a repeat of the 1930s

The European crisis seems unprecedented but it is not. This time it centres on the euro, a currency used by 17 European nations. Last time, it centred on gold, an international currency used by even more countries.

Oh, and did I mention? The last time this kind of crisis occurred was 1931 — two years into the economic slump we now know as the Great Depression.

Let us hope we have learned something in the last 81 years. The evidence, however, suggests that we have not.