Happy New Year

A belated Happy New Year!

Comments

[Jane]

Maybe so Soylent. But I do think things were tough here post WW2 for Germans for a long time. Mr Left arrived in the early 70's to go to college and the prejudice was still in full gear. He used to tell people he was Czech so he could get a job.

Maybe the work ethic was well in place before then. If so, good for them.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Me neither, but there were those in the market that were well aware of impending Congressional actions.

This particular gem took to the woodshed the already declining global trade, on top of what damage Europe had done.

Their worst act, IMO, was when they went to "balance the budget" in 1934 with a massive income tax hike.

Lots of moving parts, but everybody seems to leave out the collapse of the housing market and the havoc it caused on they banking system.

[Janet]

OT - For MoodyBlu & other Hokie fans.
Let's Go Hokies!

[NK]

MelR-- I'd like to see data on the 1929 housing crash and its effect on Banks. The conventional history of course is that the Stock Crash and cascading debt forced market players ( I won't give them the dignity of calling them investors) to raise cash immediately and the rush for the cash exits caused bank runs (hey-- it's 1929 all over again, this time with TBTF.) I thoughthe housing crash was an effect of the stock crash, not the other way around.

[Captain Hate]

Best wishes, Janet; I hope Beamerball has a better than usual post New Years result.

[NK]

MelR PS -- Agreed -- the tariffs, income tax hikes, tight Fed money, expanded Fed spending, federal overregulation in the New Deal-- there's your Great Depression lost decade right there. The '29 Crash was the crisis the Lefties of the 1920s wouldn't "let go to waste" in order to impose their socialist vision on America. It's 1929 all over again, except this time in 2008 the GSE's blew up the joint, not insider STOCK manipulators.

[Agent J]

As my Father, who lived from 1897-1956 said, "everything went to hell in a hand basket".

Everything went wrong at the same time.

[Janet]

Thanks Captain. Naomi wanted me to post it...she's so excited. :)

[rse]

jane-

I think the UK may in some ways satisfy your request for a country and also show how 3rd way politicians wanting to push socialist policies through the back door to avoid voter anger can undo the good that was done. I think that's why I liked Claire Berlinski's There is No Alternative of Thatcher's years in power.

I was a student at Oxford in 1980 and did the typical traveling about half the time and had a friend clerking at one of the Inns of Court that summer. Talking with him and seeing the country it was really in rough shape. I can remember heaters that were coin operated so you could get heat while in the room before going to bed and then use lots of blankets. You would hop up quickly the next AM to insert a coin for heat to get dressed by,

In 1996 I had a business meeting there and it was a huge change. Cell phones, bustling, great changes, trains, prosperous.

In 2005 I took my daughters, 7 and 10, and frequently encountered people on trains who realized we were Americans and wanted to talk. One commonly expressed wish was how much they missed the assurance that the government would take care of them and that privatization had gone too far.

When people ask me if there's still time to change here, my answer is yes because there's still access a generation away of a more enterprising, less intrusive, individualist existence. But 2 generations seems to be too much if the chains are invisible or seem comfortable. If, like Eastern Europe, the control and exploitation is more overt, maybe the memory of being free can be preserved for longer as a source of fighting back.

[Captain Hate]

Janet ,is she going to the game?

[Melinda Romanoff]

The price action of the DJIA was a "crash" percentage wise on Black Friday, but the overwhelming trend was already falling over the course of the year. This followed the collapse of the housing market that began in 1928, as documented here (note the embedded research paper).

It was a collapse of credit, not stock prices, that triggered things back then, just as they did in 2007. I see no real difference, other than speed from superior communication.

[narciso]

I do recall Jude Wanniski, in his the Way the World works, had parallel headlings, on the progress of the SH bill, re the market ticker,
that wasn't a major factor, like the double
interest rate/oil price spike, but it was certainly a factor.

Scheuer, was Ron Paul's foreign policy guru in 2008 as well, reading his Bin Laden bio,
he elides the difference between understanding
him (which apparently no one else can)and agreeing with him.

[Janet]

Janet ,is she going to the game?

No...her & Nathan are heading to a local sports bar which is wall-to-wall Hokies for the televised games. All decked out.
She leaves for Lugano, Switzerland for a semester abroad on Thursday...so she is too broke to go to any far away football games.

[NK]

MelR-- the rate of home ownership in 1928 and certainly the amount of home ownership debt was significantly smaller than in 2008. Therefore,eroding home equity had less of an impact than we are currently seeing. That said -- cascading effect of credit contraction gave us 1929-1930. bad Government policy gave us the Great Depression 1931-1941.

[Captain Hate]

She leaves for Lugano, Switzerland for a semester abroad on Thursday

Nice

[narciso]

Lifr imitates Python, not for the first time;

http://clclt.com/theclog/archives/2011/12/30/occupy-charlotte-splits-up-following-flag-burning-incident-at-campsite

[Melinda Romanoff]

As compared to the size of each period's banking system, each event was enough to crush them. The similarities don't end there. As the banks began collapsing in '28, their financial records were lost with them. County documentation fell of as well, for lack of cash for the fees. Title trails were lost. This led to the formation of the FHLB's, under Hoover, so as to "clean" titles and start the housing market again. FDR killed it almost immediately, only to restart them seven years later, when nothing but them had worked.

The history is definitely there to study. Credit contractions, due to housing, or other bubbles are not new. Read Mises on The Causes of the Economic Crisis. It's very short but chock full of insight, especially since it was written in 1913 about an Austrian event that sired the Economic School now known as Austrian.

Well worth the time to learn about.

[bolitha]

First of all, I have really enjoyed for some time reading all the comments here on JOM and have laughed, learned a lot and really enjoyed, for the most part, all of you and your posts. I would never deliberately hurt anyone's feelings, but I do think that some of you have a "thin skin." I just thought that Jane, having a syndicated radio show--is that right?--would know things that I know without having a radio show, etc. and wondered if maybe she was young and was not taught things in school as I suspect young people nowadays are not taught. Anyway, I will no longer post--as I am sure all of you will appreciate--but, if you don't mind--I will lurk! Heehee.

[Melinda Romanoff]

bolitha-

I know I get a bit defensive when Jane takes offense. I know for me it's being in a forum that is much more accepting of conservative thought than in our public lives. When someone I know gets pushed on, I'll push back as well.

I don't know you well enough to do the same for you.

Yet.

I would like that chance, still.

(And I have definitely stepped in it before, and have been duly taken to task for it.)

[Captain Hate]

Suit yourself, bolitha; for some reason you've been taking snarky shots at Palin fans and Jane sporadically for the last month or so, which was either unusual or I hadn't noticed that before. I'd rather have you here posting than not but obviously you should do what you want.

[Jane]

Bolitha,

JOOC what would a "thick skin" response to your post have been?

Seems if you are leaving, you can dish it out but not take it - the true measure of a thin skin.

[Clarice]

Sometimes pots seem snarkier that the author intended. I have a feeling that's the case with Bolitha and his remarks to Jane. Apologize and stick around.

[Clarice]

**poSts* seem snarkier

[centralcal]

*ahem* Bolitha is a she.

[Sara]

That's right Appalled. I took German history in HS (instead of American history

Wow! My high school required 4 years of history to graduate. State (PA) history in 9th grade, American History 10th, World History 11th, and in 12th Constitution, Treaties, Foreign Policy, military, and social movement history. We also were required to have 2 years of geography, North American and World as well as our English lit classes were divided along historical lines or eras.

As to the stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed, I always thought it was speculators and market players with underfunded margin calls. I know that in our household, my parents would never buy on credit and they never had a complimentary word to say about FDR. My 19 year old Mother was a newly minted college graduate in 1929 with a degree in economics and my Dad, 2 years older was coaching at his college after graduation waiting for a job in his field of civil engineering. Whatever the cause, it had a lifelong effect on both of them.

I don't know what Bolitha's motives were, but the Crash/Depression were still so fresh for most of those old enough to be teaching and it had such a negative effect on everyone, that it permeated our school work in every kind of way in our early years of school. This didn't really change all that much in high school as these same generation of teachers were also returning WWII vets or the wives and mothers of vets, so we got alot about the economic causes for the rise of Hitler and the fall of Europe.

However, everything changed in the 1970s when the Bill Ayers contingent of misfits and protesters began to infiltrate the schools. I was appalled at how poorly educated both my son and daughter were in subjects such as economics and history. My son's school offered stupid stuff like the evolution of folk dancing or basket weaving in place of history. Grrrrr! We tried to overcome these deficits by taking historical vacations where we toured historical sites, etc. so that the kids got some idea of history.

[mockmook]

I did not take bolitha's original post as offensive (though I can see how it is seen that way).

Stick around (and post) b

This seems like a big misunderstanding. I don't think anyone will remember this kerfuffle in a day.

[narciso]

It seems Galbraith's account, was the received notion from the 1950s, on, the idea
like Wanniski put forth, that external eventslike Smoot Hawley was involved were discarded. The wiki entry includes mention
of Jim Cramer recommending this account.

Consequently, if that is the prognosis, the
solution is to curb speculation, hence Glass
/Steagall, in a similar fashion, Dodd/Frank
was proposed as a solution to the wrong problem, Alternate narratives like those put forth by Schweitzer, Wallison, et al, are inconvenient to those policies.

[Thomas Collins]

We all have gaps in our knowledge base. Jane's straightforward acknowledgment that she doesn't know it all is refreshing. Being secure enough to acknowledge in a group what one doesn't know is a rare and welcome attribute.

[sbw]

I have this vivid memory of my teacher,

in a brown shirt, ...

[Melinda Romanoff]

narciso-

There is no way to know what Dodd/Frank is until the bureaucrats get finished writing 20,000 pages of mandatory regs. There are no instructions, to speak of, as to what those regs must cover.

[daddy]

"But 2 generations seems to be too much if the chains are invisible or seem comfortable. "

rse,

Frequently in the history write-ups of the end of the Roman Republic and the long reign of Augustus ushering in the Empire, the discussion is that his effective control from about 30 BC to 14 AD, was long enough to make the nation forget what it was to be a member of a Republic and to fully acquiesce to being a subject/citizen of an Empire.

It's more in depth and subtle than that of course, especially because of the triumvirates and civil wars of the preceeding century, including Augustus's continually orchestrated public nods to the forms of Republican Government, but evidently by 14 AD (2 generations) true Republicanism was dead and buried in the hearts of his subjects.

I suspect you know this stuff way better than I but thought I'd mention it anyhow.

BTW, Boo Oxford, Go Cambridge.

Prob'ly gonna' have Elliott jumping all over me any second:)

[sbw]

The other thing to remember about Augustus was that he gave people some freedoms at the expense of taking others from them. If people could be greedy while the noose was tightened, what did they care.

Aah... You do notice that the Obama government is letting its supporters shoot up with "free" money.

[Jane]

I have this vivid memory of my teacher,

in a brown shirt, .

I've often looked back on that and wondered who was influencing harvard/Ratcliffe in the late 60's. I am also surprised that her views did not create more outrage, altho I vaguely recall some.

However she was right about some things. Hitler did come in and promise to fix the economy, and did fix it.

I actually think at this point it is instructive to look at what happened to raise him into power, since there are a lot of parallels in this country today,

[cathyf]

However she was right about some things. Hitler did come in and promise to fix the economy, and did fix it.

Actually that's a left-wing fantasy, too. Hitler further wrecked the economy when he came to power through the utterly predictable outcomes of crony capitalism (aka fascism.)

[Jane]

WEll short term he helped cathy but you are probably right. I truly have no interest in supporting Hitler on any level.

I also thought his anti-semitism revealed itself while he was in office and Mr. Left told me this AM he ran on it even before the coup - blaming the bad outcome in the treaty of Versailles on the jews.

History shouldn't be so malleable.

[mockmook]

Actually that's a left-wing fantasy, too. Hitler further wrecked the economy when he came to power through the utterly predictable outcomes of crony capitalism (aka fascism.)

Posted by: cathyf | January 04, 2012 at 10:16 AM

Where did all his tanks and planes come from?

[cathyf]

There is a fascinating story of a German who almost succeeded in assassinating Hitler. There was a beer hall where each year Hitler celebrated with his top party officials. For several months every night the bomber broke into the beer hall and painstakingly hollowed out a hole in the bottom of a pillar, which he packed with dynamite on a timer. Unexpectedly, Hitler showed up a couple of hours early and departed 20 minutes before the bomb went off, otherwise he would have been killed.

The bomber was motivated by the wreck (business closings, unemployment) that Hitler was making with the economy. Pretty much exactly the same sort of wreck Obama has been making...

[cathyf]

And, mockmock, his tanks and planes came from big companies. The big companies that always thrive in {crony capitalism, fascism}. But lots of mid-sized and little businesses were crushed, and that's where most of the jobs come from.

Same as here.

[Web design sydney]

I wonder whether you could get class credit for protesting pro-OWS Columbia U professors.

[Ignatz]

--But lots of mid-sized and little businesses were crushed, and that's where most of the jobs come from.--

Yes, but there was a very large number of new openings in the exciting fields of international relations and door to door sales.
Job growth in the areas of heavy equipment and aviation export and foreign payload distributions were particularly explosive.