Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry New Year...! Merry New Year...!
2015...??? As in... TWENTY-FIFTEEN...?!?! Are you friggin' KIDDING me...?!?!
Where's my flying car - or at least my personal jet-pack?
Where the HELL is our Moon Base...?!?!
Folks... I gotta tell ya... not to be a wet blanket, but so far... the 21st Century pretty much SUCKS...
Young Bill Barker in 1982... 20 years old... a proud American with EVERY REASON to be proud!
Middle-aged Bill Barker today... 52 years old... NOT so friggin' proud. (Kinda disgusted actually...) (Yeah... MOSTLY disgusted...)
Is life all that bad? No! Hey... just because back then I could buy a bottle of Macallan 18 for roughly eight hours "kid's" pay while today it'll cost me around $200 doesn't mean I'm poor! (No... it simple means MOST of us are poorer - relatively - certainly poorer than we though we'd be.)
(No... not YOU my friend whose name dare not be mentioned... BUT... REMEMBER... it was I who predicted you'd end up "rich"; for years you insisted you'd never break six-figures!)
No... seriously... I have a good life and so do most of my friends and relatives. My "personal" complaints are few. But the country has gone to hell!
Don't believe me...? Fine. I'll keep on posting newsbites and stand-alone essays... you folks make of them what you will.
Hell... assuming that I make it into my 80's - or better - I'LL be fascinated to go back to my earliest newsbites and essays to see whether I was overly pessimistic - or perhaps not pessimistic enough!
(*GUFFAW*)
Anyway... let's hope - and PRAY - for better times to come...!
14 comments:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-02/us-debt-soars-100-billion-last-day-2014-hits-record-1814-trillion
It seems like it was only yesterday when we reported that, in yet another sleight of hand for the U.S. Treasury and Social Security Administration, U.S. debt rose by $32 billion on the last day of November - sending total US debt above $18 trillion for the first time ever.
As we further noted, it also meant "that total U.S. debt has increased by 70% under Obama, from $10.625 trillion on January 21, 2009 to $18.005 trillion most recently."
Fast forward to today...
(*SIGH*)
...when we are happy to report...
* THAT'S SARCASM, FOLKS; READ ON!
...that according to the U.S. Treasury, America's debt-funded spending spree, while supposedly slowing down if looking at the declining monthly budget deficit report, never actually has.
* YEP... KEEP READING...
As of the last day of 2014, total U.S. debt soared by $98 billion in one day (driven again by Social Security debt surging on the last day of the month to a record $5.117 trillion), and closing off 2014 with a new all time high total of $18.141 trillion in Federal debt - an increase of $136 billion in the month of December and $790 billion for all of 2014.
Source: U.S. Treasury
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://buchanan.org/blog/is-war-in-the-cards-for-2015-15413
Peering into 2015, there are wars into which our interventionists are eager to plunge that represent no immediate or grave threat to us.
One is the war the Islamic State group is waging in Syria and Iraq, a menace so great, we are told, it may require U.S. ground troops.
But why? Syria and Iraq are 5,000 miles away. And because of its barbarism and incompetence, the Islamic State is losing support in the Sunni lands it now occupies.
The Kurds have halted the group’s advance toward Irbil, Iraq. Shiite militias, no friends of ours, have halted its advance toward Baghdad. The Islamic State is under steady drone and air attack by the U.S. and Arab allies. Iran is providing men and materiel to Damascus and Baghdad in their battle against the group.
Now the Turks and Gulf Arabs, including the Saudis, appear to have awakened to the threat and are weighing in against the Islamic State.
Why not let them do the fighting?
Last month, the drums were beating for an attack on North Korea for what Sen. John McCain called a “new form of warfare” and what Sen. Lindsey Graham called “cyberterrorism” aided by China.
In “A Reply to Kim’s Cyberterrorism,” The Wall Street Journal urged a “forceful response” to deter “future attacks.” Swiftly, there followed the crashing of North Korea’s Internet system.
Query: If reports are true that Sony Pictures was hacked by ticked-off ex-employees yet North Korea’s Internet was brought down by a U.S. cyberattack... who is the cyberterrorist now?
* I HEAR YA, PAT... BUT... IT'S NORTH KOREA. FUCK 'EM.
(*WINK*)
Perhaps some of those Iranian technicians in Natanz who watched their centrifuges breaking down and blowing up from the Stuxnet virus have some thoughts on this.
* AGAIN... I HEAR YA... I'M NOT ARGUING THE LOGIC... BUT I AM SAYING THAT I DON'T WANT IRAN WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS. PERIOD.
But the most determined push for war in 2015 will come from neocons and interventionists who want a U.S.-Putin confrontation and regime change in Russia. And as Russia has a nuclear arsenal to match our own, this is a matter of real gravity.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Because of U.S.-EU sanctions on Russia for its role in Ukraine and the collapse in the price of oil, Russia’s principal export, the ruble has lost half its value, and the economy faces a contraction of 5 percent in 2015. Real hardships lie ahead for the Russian people.
But it seems they are not blaming Vladimir Putin for their troubles. They are blaming us.
“According to the respected Moscow ‘Levada Center,’ which measures political sentiment in Russian society,” the New York Observer reports, “74% of Russians have negative feelings towards the USA. … In the 1990s, 80% had positive attitude toward America.
“Currently, 76 percent of Russians hate Obama personally and only a meager 2 percent like him. … These are the maximum peaks of anti-American feelings in Russia in years. … Just last week Visa and MasterCard completely stopped their operations in Crimea, leaving more than 2 million people there without access to their money.”
One Moscow supermarket is using American flags as doormats, and customers are wiping their feet on them.
Before going home, Congress voted to levy new sanctions on Russia and authorized U.S. lethal weapons to be sent to Kiev to enable Ukraine to retake Luhansk and Donetsk and perhaps Crimea. Obama signed the bill.
(*SHAKING MY HEAD*)
With Republican hawks taking over all congressional committees dealing with foreign and defense policy, peace and war, in the new year, there will be a competitive clamor that Obama send the guns to Kiev.
And what happens then?
Will Putin abandon the rebels and face the rage of the Russian people for backing down?
Will Putin wait for the U.S. anti-tank weapons and ammunition to arrive and be sent to eastern Ukraine?
Or will Putin, a decisive sort, send in the Russian army before the U.S. weapons arrive, hive off a land bridge to Crimea — maybe more for bartering purposes — and call Obama’s bluff?
In his New Year’s message to the Russian people, Putin hailed the annexation of Crimea as an achievement that will “forever remain a landmark in the national history.”
Doesn’t sound as if he’ll be giving Crimea up any time soon.
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” said the wise Yogi Berra. But one prediction seems not too risky. Either Obama and Putin enter negotiations over Ukraine or the war in Ukraine, with 4,700 dead since April, gets bigger and wider.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2014/12/30/random-thoughts-n1936707
* BY THOMAS SOWELL
Random thoughts on the passing scene:
Now that Barack Obama is ruling by decree, he seems more like a king than a president. Maybe it is time we change the way we address him. "Your Majesty" may be a little too much, but perhaps "Your Royal Glibness" might be appropriate.
It tells us a lot about academia that the president of Smith College quickly apologized for saying, "All lives matter," after being criticized by those who are pushing the slogan, "Black lives matter." If science could cross breed a jellyfish with a parrot, it could create academic administrators.
Mitt Romney seems to be ready to try again to run for president in 2016. But most defeated presidential candidates who ran again lost again. There are much stronger Republican candidates available now than there were in 2012, including governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. At this crucial juncture in the nation's history, why run a retreaded candidate?
Explaining differences in achievements between groups often pits those who attribute these differences to ability against those who attribute differences to barriers. Neither seems to pay much attention to differences in what people want to do. Few guys from my old neighborhood were likely to end up as violinists or ballet dancers, simply because that was not what they were interested in.
When Professor Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T. boasted of fooling the "stupid" American public, that was not just a personal quirk of his. It epitomized a smug and arrogant attitude that is widespread among academics at elite institutions. There should be an annual "Jonathan Gruber award" for the most smug and arrogant statement by an academic. There would be thousands eligible every year.
Every society has some people who don't respect the law. But, when it is the people in charge of the law - like the President of the United States and his Attorney General - who don't respect it, that is when we are in big trouble.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Has anyone asked the question, "How could so many people across the country spend so much time at night marching, rioting and looting, if they had to get up and go to work the next morning?"
Hillary Clinton's idea that we have to see the world from our adversaries' point of view - and even "empathize" with it - is not new; back in 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said, "I have realized vividly how Herr Hitler feels."
(Ronald Reagan, however, made sure our adversaries understood how we felt. Reagan's approach turned out a lot better than Chamberlain's.)
Our schools and colleges are laying a guilt trip on those young people whose parents are productive, and who are raising them to become productive. What is amazing is how easily this has been done, largely just by replacing the word "achievement" with the word "privilege."
There are few modest talents so richly rewarded - especially in politics and the media - as the ability to portray parasites as victims, and portray demands for preferential treatment as struggles for equal rights.
* AMEN!
Republicans complain when Democrats call them racists. But when have you ever heard a Republican counterattack? You don't win by protesting your innocence or whining about the unfairness of the charge. Yet when have you heard a Republican reply by saying, "You're a lying demagogue without a speck of evidence. Put up or shut up!"
President Obama's establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba was not due to what the American public wanted or even what his own party wanted. It was a decision in defiance of both, just as his decisions about military matters ignore what generals say and his decisions about medical matters ignore what doctors have said. Yet pundits continue to depict him as a helpless lame duck president.
When the political left wants to help the black community, they usually want to help the worst elements in that community - thugs they portray as martyrs, for example - without the slightest regard for the negative effect this can have on the lives of the majority of decent black people.
If anyone in the mainstream media is at a loss for what New Year's resolution to make, try this: Stop "spinning" or censoring stories about race, and try telling the plain truth, if only for the novelty of it.
* HEAR! HEAR!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2014/12/31/liberals-use-of-black-people-n1936579
BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS
Back in the day, when hunting was the major source of food, hunters often used stalking horses as a means of sneaking up on their quarry. They would walk on the opposite side of the horse until they were close enough to place a good shot on whatever they were hunting. A stalking horse not only concealed them but also, if their target was an armed man and they were discovered, would take the first shot.
That's what blacks are to liberals and progressives in their efforts to transform America - stalking horses.
Let's look at some of the ways white liberals use black people.
One of the more obvious ways is for liberals to equate any kind of injustices suffered by homosexuals and women to the black struggle for civil rights. But it is just plain nonsense to suggest any kind of equivalency between the problems of homosexuals and women and the centuries of slavery followed by Jim Crow, lynching, systematic racial discrimination and the blood, sweat and tears of the black civil rights movement.
The largest and most powerful labor union in the country is the National Education Association, with well over 3 million members. Teachers benefit enormously from their education monopoly. It yields higher pay and lower accountability. It's a different story for a large percentage of black people who receive fraudulent education. The NEA's white liberals - aided by black teachers, politicians and so-called black leaders - cooperate to ensure that black parents who want their children to have a better education have few viable choices. Whenever there has been a serious push for school choice, educational vouchers, tuition tax credits or even charter schools, the NEA has fought against it.
One of the more callous examples of that disregard for black education was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's cutback on funding for charter schools where black youngsters were succeeding in getting a better education. That was de Blasio's way of paying back New York's teachers union for the political support it gave him in his quest for the mayor's office.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
White liberals in the media and academia, along with many blacks, have been major supporters of the recent marches protesting police conduct. A man from Mars, knowing nothing about homicide facts, would conclude that the major problem black Americans have with murder and brutality results from the behavior of racist policemen.
* HERE'S THE REAL DEAL, THOUGH:
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are about 200 police arrest-related deaths of blacks each year vs. between 300 and 400 for whites. That number pales in comparison with the roughly 7,000 annual murders of blacks, 94% of which are committed by blacks.
The number of blacks being murdered by other blacks is of little concern to liberals. Their agenda is to use arrest-related deaths of blacks to undermine established authority.
* AND FUCK THE ACTUAL BLACK PEOPLE LIVING IN HIGH CRIME BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS!
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)
Liberals often have demeaning attitudes toward blacks. When Secretary of State John Kerry was a U.S. senator, in a statement about so many blacks being in prison, he said, "That's unacceptable, but it's not their fault."
Would Kerry also say that white prison inmates are also faultless?
* KERRY IS A MORON...
The liberal vision is that fathers and husbands can be replaced by a welfare check: Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin told us, "It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes. ... (The problem) is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income."
(*SNORT*)
* IF YOU HADN'T READ IT... WOULD YOU CREDIT A PROFESSOR AT JOHNS HOPKINS WITH BEING SO FRIGGIN' DUMB...??? (WELL... HE IS A PROFESSOR OF... er... SOCIOLOGY...)
(*SNICKER*)
Liberals desperately need blacks. If the Democratic Party lost just 30%of the black vote, it would mean the end of the liberal agenda. That means blacks must be kept in a perpetual state of grievance in order to keep them as a one-party people in a two-party system.
When black Americans finally realize how much liberals have used them, I'm betting they will be the nation's most conservative people. Who else has been harmed as much by liberalism's vision and agenda?
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/02/are-police-stealing-people-s-property.html
“Don’t even bother getting a lawyer. The money always stays here.”
That’s what the Tenaha Police Department told 27-year-old Arkansan James Morrow after they confiscated $3,900 from his car for “driving too close to the white line.” The police reported the “odor of burned marijuana,” though no drugs were found in the car. Morrow was carted off to jail, while the car was impounded.
Eventually Morrow was released with no money, vehicle, or phone. “I had to go to Wal-Mart and borrow someone’s phone to call my mama,” he told The New Yorker. “She had to take out a rental car to come pick me up.”
Law-enforcement agencies at all levels of government provide a valuable and often thankless public service in their communities. There are, however, systemic problems that must be addressed. Perhaps one of the most egregious examples is the abuse of civil asset forfeiture laws.
* ABSOFRIGGIN'LUTELY! WE JUST DUCKED THIS BULLET HERE IN ORANGE COUNTY, NEW YORK, WHEN THE REPUBLICAN COUNTY EXECUTIVE VETOED A COUNTY CIVIL ASSET FORFIETURE LAW!
The Fifth Amendment makes it abundantly clear that “[n]o person shall… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” But for far too long, some law-enforcement agencies have used the law for their own benefit, seizing property suspected of use in a crime often without ever charging or convicting the owner of any wrongdoing.
(*NOD*)
The burden of proof, unfortunately, falls on the owner, ostensibly rendering his or her property guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of the law, with little concern for the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
* TRAMPLING ON THE FIFTH AMENDMENT IN FACT!
And since most people don’t have the financial means to fight a lengthy legal battle, the confiscated property often remains in the possession of the law-enforcement agencies that seized it.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 1 of 2)
What was originally intended to be an effort to combat organized crime has sadly morphed into an unconstitutional cash cow for local law enforcement and the federal government.
The New York Times recently reported that there are seminars that law-enforcement officers can attend that provide “useful tips on seizing property from suspected criminals.” A video shown in one seminar quotes the city attorney of Las Cruces, New Mexico, who called items that could be seized “little goodies.”
“A guy drives up in a Mercedes, brand new,” Harry S. Connelly Jr. says in the video, according to the Times. “Just so beautiful, I mean, the cops were undercover and they were just like ‘Ahhhh.’ And he gets out and he’s just reeking of alcohol. And it’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness, we can hardly wait.’
While law-enforcement agencies may have their wish lists of “little goodies” they covet, essentially “policing for profit,” civil asset forfeiture has serious ramifications for those whose property is taken from them.
As the co-founder of MoveOn.org and president and CEO of FreedomWorks, we don’t agree on many things, but this issue is one that should move progressives, conservatives, libertarians, and frankly any citizen who is offended by abuse of power to take action.
* PAY... ATTENTION... FOLKS...
Thanks to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), there is an opportunity before us to put our ideological differences aside to stop this blatant abuse of police power that erodes our civil liberties and our trust in police.
* RAND PAUL...
Earlier this year, Paul started a national conversation about civil asset forfeiture when he introduced the Fifth Amendment Restoration Act, or FAIR Act. This proposal would require federal law enforcement agencies to present “clear and convincing evidence” connecting seized property to a crime.
Though many states have reformed their civil asset forfeiture laws, some state and local law enforcement agencies still use federal statutes to seize property. The FAIR Act puts a stop to this loophole by requiring these agencies to abide by laws of the states in which they’re based.
(*STANDING UP TO APPLAUD*)
The FAIR Act also removes the incentive that law-enforcement agencies have to police for profit by redirecting seized assets from the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Fund, the value of which has swelled from some $500 million in fiscal year 2001 to nearly $4.3 billion in fiscal year 2012 (PDF).
* YET DEPRECIATING DAY BY DAY IN MOST CASES...
While some may attempt to spin efforts to reform civil asset forfeiture laws as a “soft on crime” position, law-enforcement agencies don’t exist for the purpose of enriching themselves by taking property of the very people they are charged with serving.
When our elected representatives assume their respective offices, they take an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution.” This isn’t some feel-good suggestion; it’s an obligation, one that has been ignored by too many on Capitol Hill for far too long.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle must show the American people that their civil liberties matter, and they can send a crystal clear, bipartisan message by ending this pernicious practice of law-enforcement agencies through the restoration the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/395650/print
"No Labels” seems like a dodge to me.
Or at least it used to.
I’m referring not so much to the No Labels group as to its idée fixe. The group was established in 2010 by an array of moderate Republicans and what we used to think of as “New Democrats.” Describing itself as a “movement” — the better to suggest a grassroots surge rather than a Beltway-insider gambit — No Labels devotes itself to making Washington “work”: to transcending partisan and ideological branding, to finding the common ground needed to solve the nation’s problems.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
But what if Washington is the nation’s problem?
* IT IS...!!!
Not the much-touted dysfunction of our central government but the very conceit that the problems of 320 million people are suitable to being solved by a Beltway political elite whose lives are increasingly remote from those of the people they nominally represent?
* AND THEY ARE, FOLKS... THEY REALLY ARE...
To say that “no labels” is a dodge is to use too loaded a word. No Labels members are deeply concerned about our country, particularly our security. Their desire to fix what ails us is genuine. To my mind, though, they are hearkening to a time more fondly imagined than actually lived — a time when political adversaries put their differences aside and addressed challenges cooperatively.
Presuming their good faith, as I do, it is better to say the project is... "ill-conceived."
(*NOD*)
Our political divide is about principles, not labels.
I am not just referring to the oft-observed truism that what we commonly call “liberal” is, in fact, the antithesis of liberal in the classic sense — the real liberals being those who defend the Constitution’s guarantees of individual liberty and state sovereignty against centralized government’s overbearing proclivities, namely “conservatives” and “libertarians” (at least those libertarians who actually believe in limited government — i.e., those for whom healthy skepticism about government has not devolved into implacable hostility towards government even in its essential functions).
* RE-READ THE ABOVE AS NECESSARY...
(*SMILE*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
A fascinating op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week, entitled, “The Progressive Case for Fracking.”
The author, James Bloodworth, is a self-described progressive and the editor of a blog called Left Foot Forward. The piece was compelling, except . . . after reading it, I was sure that I must be a progressive, too.
Mr. Bloodworth’s point was that, by logic, progressives should support the “hydraulic-fracking revolution” forged by American shale producers.
Why?
Because it has resulted in a steep decline in energy prices and enhanced the prospects for American energy independence, which have roiled dictatorships in Tehran, Moscow, Caracas, and Riyadh.
(Thus, the “emaciation of civil liberty,” cast by Bloodworth as the bane of progressive existence, could finally be overcome by “a price war with some of the world’s vilest regimes.”)
The most notable thing about Bloodworth’s piece, though, is why it had to be written. While it’s not at all clear that progressives oppose tyranny, their opposition to fracking is unstinting, as is their opposition to all carbon-based energy production. This hostility is based on a narrative about saving the planet; the last thing it will permit is celebration of collapsing prices that encourage more energy consumption — not unless progressives are suddenly going to start being a lot more progressive than liberals are liberal.
(*SNORTING CHUCKLE*)
This matters because progressives run Washington. The energy revolution has happened in spite of the federal government. It is driven by liberty: private property, far removed from the Beltway, exploited by private entrepreneurial initiative. Once again, the issue is not whether Democrats or Republicans in Washington have better ideas about regulation. It is about the widening disconnect between an entrenched, meddlesome, bipartisan ruling elite and a people for whom the concept of self-government does not entail being ruled.
What doesn’t work in Washington is . . . Washington — its officeholders-for-life, its strangling bureaucratic sprawl, its incestuous network of staffers and lobbyists, its naked cronyism, and its invested media.
* BURN THE CITY TO THE GROUND...!!!
* TOO MUCH...???
(*HUGE FRIGGIN' GRIN*)
The gridlock bewailed by Beltway insiders is actually a sign of political health, not dysfunction.
Our constitutional system is designed to limit the central government’s influence — not because we don’t have serious problems but because those problems are best addressed locally, where their causes are intimately understood and their impacts acutely felt.
The Constitution’s impediments against federal intrusion and radical change have been greatly eroded, but they still work.
* ONLY WHEN AND WHERE THEY'RE ALLOWED TO WORK...
Political labels do not paralyze us. The worst thing about the traditional labels — Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative — is their tendency to obfuscate rather than illuminate the real fault line.
When I encounter politicians these days, I’m less interested in whether they style themselves as “constitutional conservatives” or “pragmatic progressives”; I want to know: Do you want to make Washington work or work against what Washington has become?
* WHAT THE AUTHOR DOESN'T GET IS THAT THERE'S SIMPLY NO WAY TO MAKE WASHINGTON WORK. NOT WITHOUT MAJOR REFORMS.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-depression-that-was-fixed-by-doing-nothing-1420212315?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories
To combat the Great Recession and its long-lingering aftermath, leading central banks have pulled some $10 trillion out of thin air. Governments of the world’s principal economies have rung up almost $20 trillion in deficit spending. We often hear that the authorities have done too little. Perhaps they have done too much.
* HOWEVER...
Not so long ago, the authorities did hardly anything. In response to the severe, little-known economic slump of the early 1920s, they virtually sat on their hands. It is an often forgotten episode that suggests the potential for constructive federal inaction—and underscores the healing power of Adam Smith ’s invisible hand.
* I KNOW YOU FOLKS WEREN'T TAUGHT THIS IN SCHOOL - BECAUSE I WASN'T TAUGHT THIS IN SCHOOL. I HAD TO LEARN ABOUT IT ON MY OWN. UNDERSTAND, FOLKS... YOU'VE BEEN MANIPULATED ALL YOUR LIVES...
Beginning in January 1920, something much worse than a recession blighted the world. The U.S. suffered the steepest plunge in wholesale prices in its history (not even eclipsed by the Great Depression), as well as a 31.6% drop in industrial production and a 46.6% fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Unemployment spiked, and corporate profits plunged.
What to do? “Nothing” was the substantive response of the successive administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding. Well, not quite nothing. Rather, they did what few 21st-century policy makers would have dared: They balanced the federal budget and — via the still wet-behind-the-ears Federal Reserve — raised interest rates rather than lowering them.
Curiously, the depression ran its course. Eighteen months elapsed from business-cycle peak to business-cycle trough — following which the 1920s roared.
* Er... FOLKS... I'M NOT QUITE SURE WHY THE AUTHOR IS GIVING WILSON ANY CREDIT. WILSON SUFFERED A STROKE IN 1919 AND WAS EFFECTIVELY OUT OF THE PICTURE FOLLOWING THAT. (THUS... "INACTION.") ANY REASONABLE READING OF WILSON'S ECONOMIC POLICES PRE-STROKE (SUPPORT FOR THE FEDERAL RESERVE, ET AL) SHOULD DISSUADE READERS FROM GAINING THE IMPRESSION THAT WILSON, HOOVER, AND COOLIDGE SHARED THE SAME ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL VISIONS REGARDING GOVERNMENT'S PROPER ECONOMIC ROLE.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
The adage that “the past is a foreign country” is especially apt in economics. In 1920, “macroeconomics” had yet to be invented. People spoke of prosperity and depression but not of a national economy. Still less did they identify an organic whole for the government to manage. Intervention came later; by 1929, central bankers had begun to dabble in the technique of price-level “stabilization.” After the crash, President Herbert Hoover famously pressed employers not to cut wages.
* YEP. HOOVER WAS FDR's PREDECESSOR IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE...
(*SIGH*)
Laissez faire had its last hurrah in 1921. In the 1920 Republican Party platform, the only comment on “national economy” had to do with the stewardship of the federal finances.
* FALSE. (THE PART ABOUT LAISSEZ FAIRE HAVING ITS LAST HURRAH IN '21.)
Borrowing and interest-rate suppression during World War I had fostered a postwar boom. Imbibing the inflationary ether, Harry Truman, then in his mid-30s, opened a new haberdashery in Kansas City. General Motors built the world’s largest headquarters building in Detroit. National City Bank , forerunner to today’s Citibank , over-expanded in Cuba.
The sky took its time in falling.
A belated monetary tightening compounded the hardship of plunging prices — a combination that battered bankers, laborers, farmers, corporate titans and small businesspeople alike.
* Er... NO... NOT ALL "ALIKE." WHEN ONE HAS A STEADY SECURE INCOME FALLING PRICES ARE GOOD!
* DUH!
By the close of 1920, Billy Durant, the flamboyant chief of GM, was broke and jobless. A year and a half later, the future 33rd president of the U.S. and his haberdashery partner were out of business, and the mighty City Bank was nursing its self-inflicted wounds in Cuba.
All this made 1921 a grim time. There had been a flu pandemic and a Red Scare. Labor and management were at each other’s throats. Prohibition had closed the bars and taverns (or driven them underground). Someone had fixed the 1919 World Series. And the Federal Reserve, determined to protect the purchasing power of the gold dollar, actually raised interest rates in the face of collapsing business activity — to as much as 8% in 1920. Without a federal safety net, people got by on savings, wits or charity — or they didn’t get by.
* AH... THE GOOD OL' DAYS!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
In the absence of anything resembling government stimulus, a modern economist may wonder how the depression of 1920-21 ever ended. Oddly enough, deflation turned out to be a tonic.
* AGAIN... DUH!
Prices — and, critically, wages too — were allowed to fall, and they fell far enough to entice consumers, employers and investors to part with their money.
(*NOD*)
Europeans, noticing that America was on the bargain counter, shipped their gold across the Atlantic, where it swelled the depression-shrunken U.S. money supply. Shares of profitable and well-financed American companies changed hands at giveaway valuations.
Of course, the year-and-a-half depression must have seemed interminable for all who were jobless or destitute. It was, however, a great deal shorter than the 43 months of the Great Depression of 1929-33.
* FOLLOWED BY... THE DEPRESSION OF '37-'40.
(*SMIRK*)
* YEAH... THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE DOES SEEM TO BE BENDING OVER BACKWARDS TRYING TO PROTECT THE DEMOCRATS...
(*SHRUG*)
Then too, the 1922 recovery would bring tears of envy to today’s central bankers and policy makers: Passenger-car production shot up by 63%, for instance, and the Dow jumped by 21.5%. “From practically all angles,” this newspaper judged in a New Year’s Day 1923 retrospective, “1922 can be recorded as the renaissance of prosperity.”
* THE REPUBLICAN YEARS! THE HARDING/COOLIDGE YEARS!
In 2008, as Lehman Brothers toppled, the Great Depression monopolized the market on historical analogies. To avoid a recurrence of the 1930s, officials declared, the U.S. had to knock down interest rates, manipulate stock prices to go higher, repave the highways and trade in the clunkers.
The forgotten depression teaches a very different lesson. Sometimes the best stimulus is none at all.
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