We, as a society, have only the crash of 1987 or the distant memories of the Great Depression as ways to express what is happening, but Dmitry Orlov draws frightening connections between the situation we face today and the condition of the U.S.S.R. in the late 1980s in his marvelous new book, Reinventing Collapse.
Daily Kos: U.S.A. to collapse as U.S.S.R. did in 1991?(updated 4x)