Hello David. Big fan of your writings, am surprised to see you are still kicking around. Yet another example of the need to verify Wikipedia entries (they have you passing away 200 years ago). Thank you for the kind words!

If you have been reading/listening to Snider then you'll have noticed he (wisely) never offers a solution other than saying something along the lines of, this is the most complicated problem and will require the highest level of effort to solve. I, of course, lack his wisdom and do not have any solutions but I'm not going to let that stop me from throwing something out there.

I will note that the LDC / Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s, in which about half the world was in depression, was solved by welcoming those countries back into the global capital markets by forgiving/restructuring their existing debts. These were the Brady Bonds, and my understanding is that the US government told banks to get on board as it was better for everyone.

When did the Great Depression end? It is often said it ended with the advent of the Second World War but I read that many people (in America at least) believed the depression was going to start right back up after the war, especially as the country fell right into a recession after the war's end. It seems to me the depression ended with the wholesale reorganization and reorientation of almost all national economies towards rebuilding, towards a new future. So it seems to have been a socio-political decision. (I need to find out if there was some large release of financial capital at this point.)

The depression of the First World War, in which half the world fell into depression (advanced economies), seems to have been ended by the wholesale national reorientation and reorganization of economies.

The Long Depression ended because the global shortage of money (i.e. gold mine supply) was reversed by the South African gold bonanza. Also, at least in the USA, there was a political election in which the country made an explicit decision about the nature of its economy (1896 Silver Bryant vs. Gold McKinley).

So, my clearly incomplete investigation, suggests that the solution for present day could be sketched out as some combination of:

1) access to a sustained surge in global financial capital (central bank QE ain't it);
2) a wholesale reorganization of national economies;
3) a socio-political decision to take a path forward and not look back.

It seems like the last two options require a unifying event in which 'everyone' agrees to row the boat in the same direction.