Well it seems that our entire system became corrupted around the 70's, we stopped exporting oil, free trade agreements were signed soon after and our yearly trade deficit went through the roof as jobs shipped overseas and the population spiked worldwide creating more competition for resources. As a whole American's became poorer, but rather than living more frugally - American's instead put women to work and turned to credit for things that used to be paid cash like homes, cars and education.
Since the 1960's the entire economic engine was a fraud, only driven by a yearly expansion in debt by both households and governments. Without yearly expansion of credit we instantly went into recession. During the last recession households deleveraged - but governments took on that debt by bailing out the same banks which households just gave the middle finger to. So the next crisis will not be so much about households, but it will be about governments that overleveraged and overpromised. The big difference is who can bail out governments the size of America or the EU? If America and the EU both share a crisis again, it could easily lead to a deflationary collapse into a depression.
This is not the 1930's though; you can fully expect Alexis Tsipras style candidates to win offices, people would have food stamps, extended unemployment, government make work projects and so forth - but how much money will a government that just faced debt restructuring and cratered tax receipts really be able to issue without its populace losing confidence in its currency? Also, since money is debt, printing currency would require the expansion of debt; how does this work in the middle of a debt collapse? So perhaps America can walk this fine line and pull through, we will see. If the line cannot be walked and hyperinflation sets in throughout America and/or Europe then we can easily see a WWIII scenario.
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