Lapland Reindeer Contract Mad Cow Disease - Santa Sidelined

OK so I made that bit up, it's not true (yet), but it's perhaps less depressing than a few other headlines making their debut in the current "festive season".

"World Economy Weakest since 1930's" - UN's World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009 Report, 1st December 2008

"U.S. auto industry will probably disappear" - Paul Krugman, Nobel Economic Prize Winner, 7th December 2008

"We're almost in an air pocket, where we don't have a new global dri..." - Thomas Mayer, the chief European economist for Deutsche Bank, New York Times 9th December 2008

Now I wouldn't want to be extending Tom's comment above and run around like Chicken Little pronouncing the sky is falling, even though in a metaphorical climate-economy sense it actually is.

At least this time we've got the history and lessons from the Great Depression of the 1930's to guide us. Back in the Thirties there was no economic roadmap.

When asked about the Great Depression and if we had seen anything like it, the economist Keynes was forthright, "Yes", Keynes replied, "it was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years."

But it didn't turn out that bad and it's not gonna be that bad this time around.

The economic saviour of the world is turning up for work in January and he's going to be a good modern day Keynesian and spend up big on infrastructure and the creation of millions of "green jobs".

According to the marvelously apt green adviser to the presidential transition team, Bracken Hendrick, "Clean energy is going to be a foundation for rebuilding the American economy. Generating jobs in concert with cutting pollution will be a major component of any economic-recovery plan".

Deutsche Bank support this view have published an excellent piece of research on the "sweet spot" for green infrastructure, namely focused projects in;

(i) Energy efficient buildings, (ii) an optimised power grid, (iii) renewable power and (iv) increased efficiencies in public transport.

OK so merchant bankers got us into this mess and you'd be right to ask "what do they know?", but perhaps going forwards, the term "Hedge Funds" will actually mean "funds for hedges", in the arboreal sense rather than the current usage as a synonym for "financial apocalypse".

So whether you listen to Barack, the bankers or the tree huggers, there's going to be plenty for us materials folk to get busy with.

There's also plenty of evidence from the 1930's that shows materials technologies didn't stand still just because of a wholesale depression.

The manufacturers of "wipe clean" surfaces for soup kitchens went through their biggest boom period ever.

Joseph B Friedman patented the flexible drinking straw, presumably to reduce spillage during soup consumption.

The depression years were also a golden period of innovation for the ubiquitous materials business DuPont.

Whilst working for DuPont in 1931, Wallace Hume Carothers invented Nylon, then in 1938, Roy Plunkett invented PTFE which was later trade marked as Teflon.

Developments in the key materials analysis tool can be traced back to the electron microscope which first turned up in 1931 thanks to Ernst Ruska.

Data analysis techniques also leapt ahead.

Whilst at MIT in the 1930's, Vannevar Bush produced one of the first analog computers, the "Differential Analyser" which was used to solve complex differential equations.

As a de-facto calculator based on cogs, pulleys and levers, it took around 3 hours to get it working - yet even today that is a feat envied by millions of PC users running Vista.

So be positive, best foot forward, it won't be all doom and gloom, Barack is going to save us with a big green economic push.

The final history lesson from the great depression goes to Harold Ickes the secretary of the interior in FDR's 1933 administration.

Ickes was once asked why the new president was so bent on a huge economic stimulus package, to which Ickes replied, "You can't fertilize a 40-acre field by farting through the fence" - Go Harold, we're right behind, sorry, in front of you!!