While population density is a problem, it is the result of effective mass transit, not the cause. How can you have density with giant parking lots everywhere?

Actually this is including this month.

You are also missing this, without which the current drop would look a lot more like the crash in 29, possibly worse. Had the Federal Reserve not propped up all the failing banks they would all have most likely declared bankruptcy within a month. Where do you think the dow would be had that happened?

Here is a list of DJIA companies that would now likely be bankrupt had the government not interviened:BOA,Citigroup,GM,JPMorgan Chase

That is over 10% of the companies in the DJIA that would now be bankrupt, in the span of a few months.

The difference between now and 1929 is not the scale of the drop, but the magnitude of the governments intervention in the market.

Why should the government be in the business of subsidizing you to go see your family 100 miles away? You think the 47 cents of gas tax you pay somehow can actually cover the increasing cost of road construction and maintenance while cars are becoming more efficient? The fact is the gas tax needs to be dramatically increased, but it is political suicide to do that in America, so we get toll roads instead.

If you don't want toll roads I suggest you go lobby your congress person for a higher gas tax.

I find this logic that somehow mass transit won't work in American cities because they are too spread out to be hilarious. Have you ever thought about why they are so spread out? It is because they don't have decent mass transit and America massively subsidizes car transportation. Building decent mass transit systems leads to population density, not the other way around.

If we spent the amount of money on mass transit that we spend on road construction, traffic cops, etc, cities would be a lot denser, but we don't so we have suburban sprawl. Cities used to be a lot denser, but then there was the Great American Streetcar Scandal and now Americans are left with crappy bus service.

Maybe you should learn a little about how TCP congestion control works. TCP will notice lost packets and drop off, causing bandwidth to go down because it thinks the pipe is full. By your logic every TCP session would incessantly hammer your NIC and saturate everything with no regard for actual available bandwidth. That's not how things work.