) has lost an unreal 28%. The other financial stock charts do not look much better. The final deflationary siren is the unemployment rate which continues to hover above 9%. Even more worrisome is the fact that last week's Nonfarm payrolls report showed that hiring has slowed to a crawl. The scariest part of all of this is that the Fed and Wall Street economists are telling us that this is a temporary economic soft patch - but what if it is something much more ominous? These are the same people that told us that the subprime mortgage mess was "contained." Recessions are a normal part of the business cycle, occurring every 3-4 years. We are due for another one, and the data is suggesting that we may be experiencing a contraction by as early as the beginning of next year. Given the reflationary policies that were enacted to fight the financial crisis, and the attendant consequences of those policies, where public liabilities were transferred onto the Treasury and Fed's balance sheets, it is hard to imagine that we will be able to avoid the full brunt of what could be an incredibly devastating economic fallout. Essentially, the next time around there will be no fiscal and monetary smoke and mirrors to avoid the full consequences of the deflationary pressures that remain as remnants of the financial crisis. Of course, the exception to this line of thinking is money printing, which we know is a distinct possibility given the Fed's track record and Mr. Bernanke's past comments. Inevitably, this will lead to a level of inflation experienced by a long procession of countries who sought to assuage their debt and economic problems through the use of the printing presses. The unfortunate possibility exists that the United States will take this Road to Perdition as well, and it will end, as always, in disaster. It may not be too late for our country to reverse course, but we could be approaching that dark hour of calamity - and any permanent solution to the problems that many Americans had hoped (unrealistically) that we buried in the ashes of the financial crisis will involve shared sacrifice and coherent leadership, which unfortunately is in short supply right now.