Is today like the great recession or the great depression?

Every financial circumstance has a unique set of causes. Credit unions’ responses must be custom as well.

Can CU finance people who remember the Great Recession rely on their experience handling that one to get their organizations through the current slowdown? A little? Not at all? The answer may depend on who you ask.

Derek Fuzzell, CPA, CMA, CSCA, doesn’t think lessons learned in the 2008 recession apply now.

“Nothing repeats exactly, but the Great Depression is a better model for what to expect,” says the CUES member and CFO of $240 million PAHO/WHO Federal Credit Union in Washington, D.C. He’s a student of history who has studied the Depression.

“The Great Recession hit the financial sector hard, but restaurants stayed open,” he notes. “Stores stayed open. The people who worked there got paid and paid their bills. Lots of people continued as usual, and they saved the economy. The finance people who lost their jobs weren’t big spenders anyway. This will hit harder. I’m looking more at the Great Depression for guidance.”

 

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