Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, technically the Great Depression lasted 4 years, from 1929 to 1933. Economic output plunged 38 percent, and unemployment reached an all-time high of 25 percent. In comparison to today, we're looking at a drop in output of 4 percent, and our unemployment rate at the national level is still under 10 percent. The economy actually grew in the '30s after 1933, so technically the Great Depression was over in 1933. But it grew at a very, very slow pace, and so actually lots of the research that's been done on the Great Depression not so much focuses on the actual years of the Great Depression but on why the economy grew so slowly in the aftermath. In fact, output at the end of the '30s was still lower than at the beginning of the '30s, and there's been a lot of focus, for example, on tax increases. The federal government actually increased taxes in the middle and late '30s. Also, they did some things in the labor market that made labor more expensive potentially, which caused businesses not to hire as many workers as they might have. So this is a fascinating era to discuss and study, and there are some lessons for today."