Looking at consumer prices over time

This is the comparison trend to look at.  All consumer prices, consumer prices less food, and consumer prices less energy.  We see that absent energy prices, price stability has been quite nice for the consumer.

Has the consumer over adjusted for the jump in gas prices?  Well the blue line is staying conservatively lower after the crash than before.  That is not risk aversion, that is a quantum effect, the consumer has landed at a fixed rung in the ladder in terms of contraction, the consumer economy has made an adjustment.

The adjustment appears on the balance sheet, and economists point to the balance sheet as the cause.  No, the balance sheet is simply accurate, the cause was the sudden realization that the current transportation patterns could not hold.  Since then we have been covering the losses between what we thought would work but isn't, in transportation.   Depressions are simple stuff, because they involve sudden shortages of essential somethings we all use, so everything boils down to scalar arithmetic.