This is depressing

The great images left in history books about the last Great Depression mostly were about unemployment lines and their kindred soup kitchen lines. While their existence proclaims bad times, the length of these lines seem to measure the generation's depression.

So what are we to think about these stories?

Youth unemployment passes 50pc in Spain and Greece

Youth unemployment now exceeds 50pc in both Spain and Greece as the number of people out of work in the eurozone as a whole hit a 15-year high of 17.2m.

These rates compared with an average eurozone youth unemployment rate of 21.6pc. One of the lowest rates of youth unemployment is in Germany, where it remained at 8.2pc in February.

See, too, Euro-Region Unemployment Surges to 14-Year High, Nears Record

In the last Great Recession, idle hands proved to be the pollies' workshop.