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I read a book on the great depression and there are so many paralles with now that it was really suprising. The book was written in 1930(or 31) and the title is Since Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen. He wasn't an economist by the way. But it seems like we are heading into something big again judging by the world situation(trouble spots) and recent past economic diffeculties. Back in the 1920s people were saying that we are too big to fail. Ring a bell. And it was hard to figure out who owned what. Company A owned part of company B who owned part of company C who owned part of company A, etc. Ring a bell? World trouble spots contributed to the great depression. Ring a bell? Back then the European economy was having trouble with debts that was getting to be serious. Ring a bell? Rapid technological changes were having an impact on workers lives changing. Ring a bell?
I see little relationship tot eh great depression when stocks were over inflated in a bubble. This was a credit and houisng bubble but support was much better now to indic viduals especailly. Not even like the 70;s recession. Like all it will bring changes most of whcih were already slowly happenig in work.Who knows the consequernces long term of QE and such high deficit that grew duirng thise recssion or what effect euorpe who could be like japan inh length of recovery to near normal.
Not really. The "interlocking trusts" that were common in the Jazz Age proved to be unworkable. It would be stretch to call either the "private equity funds" or "holding company" structure of current corporate ownership similar.
Arguably there are ALWAYS "rapid technological changes" whether those changes are from centuries ago when there was a shift away from feudal type agrarian communities to those based more on trade and manufacturing, the various industrializations that swept Europe and then the US, advances in coal powered transportetion , initial eras of electrical innovations, growth of early vacuum tube computers,nuclear proliferation, shifts in tele-communications, space exploration,personal computing, cellular communication, smart phones , who knows what is next...
There are also similarities (parallels) to the period directly following WW II. We were coming off an extended period of financial distress, the debt-to-GDP ratio was 120%, people were fearful of taking on (housing) debt, no one thought we were about to enter a period of unprecedented prosperity in the US. Things turned out much different in the following 25 years than most might have forecast.
The Great Depression was largely started by the gold standard at first. If we were still on it as so many extreme conservatives suggest we should be then another depression surely could follow. Because we were not and expansionary fiscal decisions were available the downward spiral was mostly contained after some brutal economic times in 2008 and early 2009.
Nope, he was not an economist…he was a historian. I have read the book and he doesn’t detail any hard economics measures in the book, but it goes into what he remembers people saying at the time. Therein lays the problem with this whole analysis. Just because people said things that sound kind of, sort of, similar to what was said at each time doesn’t mean that they were the same. I have read books going back to housing booms in urban England in the 1800’s that sounded a bit like the housing bust in 2007…but without hard data it’s nothing more than historical interest that what people talk about really hasn’t changed much.
A number of economic analyses of the great depression (or long depression) and current economic issues have been made with a wide variation on their conclusions and accuracy. So far none of the ones predicting a crash have remotely come true. We have our own forum doomsayers that have constantly predicted the next crash for years, and have failed in their predictive capability every time. Even they usually provide some hard data instead of 80 year old gossip.
The market goes up, and the market goes down. It’s a fact of life. Get used to it.
I read a book on the great depression and there are so many paralles with now that it was really suprising. The book was written in 1930(or 31) and the title is Since Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen. He wasn't an economist by the way. But it seems like we are heading into something big again judging by the world situation(trouble spots) and recent past economic diffeculties. Back in the 1920s people were saying that we are too big to fail. Ring a bell. And it was hard to figure out who owned what. Company A owned part of company B who owned part of company C who owned part of company A, etc. Ring a bell? World trouble spots contributed to the great depression. Ring a bell? Back then the European economy was having trouble with debts that was getting to be serious. Ring a bell? Rapid technological changes were having an impact on workers lives changing. Ring a bell?
There are many similarities from an economic point. Specifics change, but they had many similar causes.
Ultimately we need another "New Deal" of sorts to get back on the path to prosperity. Balance has to be restored to the labor-capital relationship, and we have to return to protectionist policies instead of leaving our economy to the wolves in no-holds-bared globalism.
There are many similarities from an economic point. Specifics change, but they had many similar causes.
Ultimately we need another "New Deal" of sorts to get back on the path to prosperity. Balance has to be restored to the labor-capital relationship, and we have to return to protectionist policies instead of leaving our economy to the wolves in no-holds-bared globalism.
The new deal did not get us back to prosperity. WWII did.....
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