[WS:] I am in full agreement, for a change ;). What makes this recession and its fallout fundamentally different form the Great Depression of 1929 is the non-existence of the so-called "communist threat" in the form of a state supporting revolutionary ambitions in the US and Europe. In 1929 the capitalists were hanging by the skin of their teeth, and recessions and austerity could have tipped the balance in favor of communists. Today, austerity measures may piss a lot of people off but they will not change the balance of power against the neoliberal hegemony.
While we are at that - the behavior of Western European countries around the Great Depression is a clear proof of the falsehood of the war as distraction hypothesis. Capitalists were under a serious threat from communist movements far more powerful than today's protest, and yet they pursue the policy of appeasement to avoid the war at any cost. If that hypothesis were true, they would went to war against Russia or Germany in the 1920s.
Wojtek