A double dip foretold

Are we headed for a ‘double dip’? The head of the United States Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said last month that this is unlikely in the US, but a recent CNN poll shows 48 percent of Americans think the country is en route to another Great Depression in the next 12 months. The other options raging through economic debates around the world is whether the US is on track not merely for another dip, but a mega-dip, or indeed if the US economy ever actually pulled out of the first recession. If a second financial crisis occurs it will be bad news not just for the world’s largest economy, but for everyone on the planet.  The problem, in short, is regulation, or the lack thereof. It was the lax regulatory oversight of such financial products as derivatives and sub-prime mortgages in the US and elsewhere that triggered the first financial