Before I post my own thoughts in several posts, I'd like to add one more important link, not necessarily important for explaining the current economic troubles, but generally important nonetheless.

I'm only 22 years old, part of what I've heard called "generation sloth" here.


Now in addition to those troubles with moral coaching from on high forbidding children to work, consider this.

I really think these kind of laws and attitudes are part of what is eroding the good characters of youth and eroding the moral foundations of our society.
And when domestic moral self-righteousness becomes popular enough to prevent children from eating in societies where they would have been working, there is a problem to discuss.

There is nothing inherently evil and terrible about children working, and we should consider how these laws and beliefs can actually harm children.

Okay, now after that series of useful links I will be contributing some actual thoughts to this space. A series of hopefully interesting "articles," if you'll allow me, are forthcoming.

I beg of you a pinch of patience, though to do so perhaps allocates an inflated portion of esteem to myself.

The argument against optimism right now

This is a look at why the market will not be entering a sustainable bull market any time soon. This is the view I agree with.
Jobless recovery?

The crisis is ongoing.
Along the same train of thought.

Gold

The advantages of gold.

The very nature of a gold standard makes it abhorrent to bankers, governments, big business, and the horde of rent-seeking special interests looking for a handout.

The IMF

This is merely a brief article that should make it very clear that it is important to understand the IMF.

http://mises.org/daily/3746

The argument against war[s]

This is a timeless argument against war (for the US). It is a specific argument the points for which are by and large specific to the United States' situation. One could argue the publishing date makes it antiquated. But consider the difference in intensity between the threat posed on the world by terrorists and the one posed on the world by the Axis, and one can being to sense the timelessness of many of these uniquely anti-"American War" arguments.

Still, our best defense is not offense. It is defense.

http://mises.org/daily/3746

The argument for optimism

This man gives probably the most solid argument for optimism, even if he has proven incorrect a year later. Shortly, I will present the argument for pessimism, which is unfortunately the camp that I stand in.
Because this "recovery" is different in that there is not real recovery in sight. All signs of "recovery" are driven merely by monetary inflation propping up prices. But whereas some of that may have worked for awhile, we are honestly getting much closer to the collapse of the current unsustainable system. The difference is that many of the more astute market participants can sense this.

It is possible that we will see a temporary lift in some indicating factors, but it is nearly certain that the fundamentals like job growth are going to remain anemic at best for the near future. This is not a confidence problem in the sense that there are real reasons for low confidence. Namely the problems that the recession is supposed to have exorcised from the system have not been filtered out..
because prices have not been allowed to drop, bankrupt businesses were not allowed to go bust and public money is pouring in to areas of the economy that private money is fleeing (so the new destinations for private money are not allowed to surface). The reason both cannot grow is that this time there is a huge hulking fed gov't that's getting to the breaking point and is making no room for the future. And the portion of wealth it is eating with continuing malinvestments is reaching the magical limit wherein it is too much for the profit producing sectors to carry.

Namely, people see that the bills on public losses haven't been paid yet and will need to be in the near future -- in the form of inflation. Further, the bad debt must be liquidated, and many investors have remained invested in publicly propped up bankrupt firms.. and many investors remain deeply in debt themselves.

This specter of doom, and the bankrupt firms' wealth destruction, is keeping enough money from finding new investments and creating jobs. Add to this uncertainty from new legislation, and it is fairly clear why investors are sitting on their funds and saving.

I would argue that any "recovery" can't last long because the problems with the previous boom have still not been ironed out.

Nonetheless, the soundly reasoned positive outlook:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204518504574420811475582956.html

A very important question to ask..

There is a significant bubble in certain specialities of higher education. I can personally attest to the fact that even graduates of specialities where there is less of a bubble (like civil engineering) are having trouble finding work. .. this depression isn't helping, but the fact of the matter is that at some point there are too many people expecting to work outside of the manual labor trades, and not enough in them.
This is a main argument for more liberal immigration laws, and ones not centrally controlled by the Federal Government (states used to have control over this issue), but I digress.

So, eventually we come to the key uncomfortable question:
How many graduate students is too many?

http://mises.org/daily/4832