Lava Tubes, The Federal Reserve, and The Economy

ehunter started a "fire" thread called Well I have been laid off on 01/27/09. It started a discussion about the deteriorating economic situation wherein I eventually said, "I guess I have a doomsday outlook on things. I think in 20yrs we will have become like Afghanistan with regards to our infrastructure. I think there'll be days when we will only have 4 or 5 hours electricity - or none at all. I think we'll have limited telephone service. Etc. And I think a full out depression is imminent. How could it not be?"

I really believe this, but I don't know why. Not yet.

From here my interest turned to this thread and the Federal Reserve. Some poignant things were said by people I believe know what they're talking about:
Bristoe - "The Federal Reserve has been playing games with the nation's monetary system and crashed it,...badly,...extremely badly. Even if massive numbers of people weren't losing their jobs, they wouldn't be able to work enough to fix it. This crash is of a scale that's never been seen before. Nobody has any idea how to deal with it or even if there *is* a way to deal with it."

Emphasis on "...Even if massive numbers of people weren't losing their jobs, they wouldn't be able to work enough to fix it."

mike762 - "...The further our economy descends, the easier it will be for the statists to gain permanent control, much as they did after the New Deal. Unfortunately, I think it will collapse along the way, long before it gets better. ..."

And I said, "...I don't know too much about the Fed's purpose - what it can/can't do. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that ... what's a good analogy? all this money flowing so freely around is kinda like a lava tube ripe to collapse on itself. Or a lava tube that's outgrown the volcano, yet still needs to be fed. Something along those lines. ... Where's all this 'free flowing money' coming from? It's scary...."

I finally invested all my thoughts in a thread called What's Wrong with the Economy....