The depression of 1929 is the wrong model for the current economic crisis

By SCOTT REYNOLDS NELSON for The Chroncle of Higher Education

As a historian who works on the 19th century, I have been reading my newspaper with a considerable sense of dread. While many commentators on the recent mortgage and banking crisis have drawn parallels to the Great Depression of 1929, that comparison is not particularly apt. Two years ago, I began research on the Panic of 1873, an event of some interest to my colleagues in American business and labor history but probably unknown to everyone else. But as I turn the crank on the microfilm reader, I have been hearing weird echoes of recent events.

When commentators invoke 1929, I am dubious. According to most historians and economists, that depression had more to do with overlarge factory inventories, a stock-market crash, and Germany's inability to pay back war debts, which then led to continuing strain on British gold reserves. None of those factors is really an issue now. Contemporary industries have very sensitive controls for trimming production as consumption declines; our current stock-market dip followed bank problems that emerged more than a year ago; and there are no serious international problems with gold reserves, simply because banks no longer peg their lending to them.

UPDATE: It's finally here! Not much of Howard Dean left, but the show stars Chris Noth of Law and Order fame.

From CAP's Progress Report :

And finally: Yeeeaaaarrrrrggghhh!!: The Musical. An "unlikely subject may be headed for Broadway this fall: Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. Last week, Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal did a private reading of 'Farragut North' (written by playwright and former Dean campaigner Beau Willimon) about the presidential hopes of a charismatic, unorthodox candidate and his staff."

 

 

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.

Lifted whole-cloth from The Center for American Progress' Progress Report:

I've been enjoying reading Huffington Post more lately now that politics has distracted Arianna's editorial staff from the Hollywood gossip scene and today I see this article about Karl Rove's statements on Faux news Sunday about the McCain campaign going too far with their TV ads.

Well, knowing what I do about Karl Rove, he's probably speaking more about McCain having used these ridiculous statements in TV ads that are tagged with "I'm John McCain and I approve this message" and not leaking the messages out through channels that are harder to trace back to the campaign. I mean, as old Turd Blossom himself points out, McCain has succeeded in setting himself up as a target for ridicule, and that breaks rule number two in the Rove playbook, rule number one being to project your weaknesses onto your opponent and claim their strengths as your own. The rule violated here is never go negative with your name attached; always find a surrogate or just use anonymity as a cloak.

John McCain - obviously, not ready to lead. At least not as well as Rove/Bush. (Now there's a scary thought, eh?)

I usually frown on giving free publicity to candidates by making their ads discussion  points, but this is just too rich. Republican rubberstamp Charlie Dent is running this ad on the web:

 

 

 Now, really, are there people out there gullible enough to actually believe that? I mean, isn't fire the ultimate prerequisite for even having an energy policy? And, isn't an effective energy policy necessary to "keep the home fires burning?" I suppose Charlie Dent would rather not have an energy policy that ensures the future of fire, but prefers the Republican plan that just burns the candle at both ends until  there's no candle left...and the fire goes out?So, who's voting against fire now, Charlie?

In an op-ed at Rupert Murdoch’s London Times, associate editor Anatole Kalestsky writes that America must give the Republicans “a good kicking” to reassert the most important facet of democracy - not just to elect good governance but to get rid of bad governance. It’s an op-ed that is highly critical of the Democratic party’s choice - Murdoch’s UK papers preferred Clinton - and of Dem tactics to date. But it really gets the message across on McCain and the GOP

Whether or not Mr McCain would continue the policies of President Bush (and much of the evidence suggests that his would be a Bush presidency on steroids), he would keep in power the coalition of interests that the Republican Party represents: the energy and military-industrial lobbies, the religious conservatives, the anti-environment interests and the neoconservative think-tanks. These groups - which have gained enormous influence, both financially and intellectually, under President Bush - are as responsible for the blunders of the Bush Administration as Mr Bush himself, arguably more so, given the President’s notorious lack of interest in the details of any of his own policies.

If a Republican is again elected president, these same centres of power will continue to dominate Washington. However many wars they encouraged, however high the price of oil rose, however many tax dollars were redistributed in their favour, the neoconservatives and Pentagon contractors and religious fundamentalists and oil and Wall Street lobbies would conclude that there would be no political price to pay for failure. They would be justified in concluding that there is no longer any democratic check on their ambitions.

It is only by ejecting the Republicans from the White House that American voters can send the message that they are still in charge of their country and that gross government incompetence will not go unpunished. Accountability - not personality or rhetoric or colour or age or gender - should be the overriding issue in this election.

Hat tip to John Amato's Crooks and Liars blog.

The McCain campaign continues to misrepresent Obama's tax plan. From FactCheck.org:

He (McCain) and others in his campaign have been saying for weeks that Obama once voted for a Democratic budget bill that McCain falsely claimed would raise taxes on persons making as little as $32,000 a year. We challenged that false claim

in an article posted July 8. In this ad, McCain says Obama voted to raise taxes on persons making "just $42,000 a year," which is true for some but not all. Yet the ad still misleads.

Sometimes it is known as the "publishing business" but ethics-challenged rightwingers appear to find book sales to be a great source of untraceable cash that they can put to use to defeat candidates they don't like.

Today's NYTimes contains an article describing how Republican operatives Mary Matalin and Jerome Corsi have teamed up to market a smear piece on Barack Obama titled The Obama Nation. (Clever, doncha think?)

Of course, the NYT is only mentioning the book because it it is now on their Best Seller list for nonfiction, as was Corsi's previous work of fiction Unfit for Command which was cowritten with John O'Neill and lent credence to the whole Swiftboat phenomenon that sank John Kerry's campaign in 2004. Even though they provide the evidence, the Times' writers, JIM RUTENBERG and JULIE BOSMAN, fail to draw, or at least mention the possibility of, the conclusion that is obvious to me.

No, not that The Obama Nation is actually fiction, which it is. They actually do a pretty good job of pointing that out: