There have been a lot of comparsions between now and the Great D. Things are much different now though- maybe not in good ways either. Government aren't going to let banks fail (even if they should fail) and apparently they will even try to keep stock markets from going down (see: the SEC ban on short-selling). So now it seems either the governments will eventually stablize everything but kill growth (ala Japan) or the governments will print so much money inflation will kill the economy.