The Return to Anxiety

The Return to Anxiety

Exactly when a recession becomes a depression, whether we will have the one or, in time, both, what can be done to prevent a further slide into unemployment — these, certainly, are important questions.

Exactly when a recession becomes a depression, whether we will have the one or, in time, both, what can be done to prevent a further slide into unemployment — these, certainly, are important questions. But at the moment they may not be quite so important as the fact that for the first time in at least a decade the state of American economic life has become problematic.

During the past ten or twelve years most Americans could feel a tentative security with regard to their own jobs. Knowing as they did that our post-war prosperity was tied to the fuse of a new and greater international catastrophe, they nonetheless felt that, at the moment, they did not have to worry about their immediate well-being. Within the basic context of anxiety that shapes our age it was possible to experience a certain relaxation. The depression memories that had burned themselves so deeply into the consciousness of millions were slowly eased: workers paid off debts and relieved mortgages, intellectuals developed theories of American uniqueness.