Similarities between 1929 and 2008 terrifying

The Prairie Dog Press
Will Bagley
Monday, July 7, 2008

Watching Wall Street and the American real-estate market crumble over the past 10 months has not inspired great confidence in our wonderful free-market economy or the land pirates who run it. As someone who recently wrestled with the causes and consequences of the Great Depression, I find the current economic shipwreck not merely spooky but downright terrifying.

Working as a historian is a discouraging business. No one seems to learn anything from history – that’s pretty much a given – but we keep hoping. As a chronicler of the 19th century American West, I had my work cut out when a family friend asked me to write a biography of her father, Judge Wilson McCarthy.

Herbert Hoover appointed McCarthy to represent Western Democrats on the board of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Hoover’s only real response to the worst economic disaster in American history. The RFC attempted to restore liquidity to the economy by getting cash out from underneath mattresses and into circulation.

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Last year I had to look up “liquidity” to remind myself what it meant. Today I could sort through 23.2 million Google hits to learn more.

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.”

The similarities between economic conditions in 1929 and 2008 rhyme like hickory, dickory, dock. As early as 1935, “brain truster” Rexford Tugwell identified the root cause of the Great Depression as the failure “to pass on a fair share of the spectacular productivity gains of the 1920s” to both labor and consumers.

Full article here.

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5 Responses to “Similarities between 1929 and 2008 terrifying”

1. Andy White Says:
   July 7th, 2008 at 9:59 pm

   This is a stupid article. This guy suggests the Great Depression was the result of free markets. If the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 and has been in operation ever sense, there clearly was no free market then and there is no free market now.

   The Road to Serfdom

   http://mises.org/books/TRTS/

2. Gregory Fegel Says:
   July 7th, 2008 at 10:55 pm

   Free markets almost never exist because the most successful, wealthiest, or most greedy corporations or individuals usually purchase an alliance with the government to suppress the rights of others. It is doubtful that the USA EVER had a ‘free market’ system or economy. Remember, slavery was legal in the USA until 1863, and women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920. You cannot therefore say that a ‘free market’ existed for blacks or women under such conditions.

3. Scott Fox Says:
   July 8th, 2008 at 6:38 am

   Characterizing the present US economy as ‘free-market’ is completely false.

4. Kevinabt Says:
   July 8th, 2008 at 10:42 am

   The housing bubble was not created by a free market. It was created by the market manipulation of the Fed who printed out vast quantities of money and ‘lent’ it to new home buyers resulting in house prices being bid way up beyond reason. Same thing happened with stock prices just prior to the great depression. In a free market people would not be constrained by law to accept federal reserve notes as if they were actually worth something.

5. Scott Webb Says:
   July 9th, 2008 at 3:10 am

   This vid is a must for those who want a fast track on FREE TRADE etc…….called …….The Committee of 300…..well worth the watching of http://video.google.co.uk/vide.....&hl=en