Again, thank Clinton for removing the banking restrictions.
Happily, the collapse of oil prices may have saved the US. One of the core underpinnings of all macroeconomics is that the US dollar will remain stable. Literally every other calculation depends on it. If the US dollar was inviolate, then we would be looking into the abyss. And for a while it seemed that was the case. When our pussy Canadian dollar was worth 1.10 US (and those were fine times) there were real rumblings that oil, among other things, would be priced in the Euro, which would have been disastrous for the US dollar long term but the collapse of oil has sort of scared people off from making that move.
I doubt this recession will last long. What is happening in the manufacture sector is long overdue, and while I feel for the guys on the assembly lines in Detroit, they should have known this was coming - its been obvious since the eighties. The fact that Ford was able to do a rapid restructure and avoid the real mauling indicates that this mess in at least somewhat quantifiable.
Anyway, invest in green technology. Untapped items that are only held back by the lack of economy of scale is always a good place to dump your money in a financial crisis since they usually lead the way out if it again. Military equipment in the 1940s and internet junk in the nineites.