It's 1929 again: ' From crash to meltdown in 80 years'

Everything is circular, it's true.

Wall Street was invented to rob good people and companies to exploit the Military Industrial Complex. They exist and constantly remind us....that without the Military there would be no America....is one of the greatest lies of propaganda on the American people. Deals and mergers suck off taxes that go to support the Military Club in the USA... You are either with us or against us.... We see how the military who does nothing except make up trouble and wars....to justify their wars & Institution..... to kill a bunch of people to make their illicit Institution a serious one...is the cornerstone to the American Nighmare. ... Words like crash to meltdown....are soothing words in my book....when it means the Military is being left without for once.... I guarantee if Congress passed a law that the US Kilitary needs to be downsized when the economy prospers.....We will find true GDP numbers, true corporate and Small Business stocks....and friends around the world who support American Enterprise. As long as the Politicians and Wall Street hoodlums garner and feather the nest of the Kilitary....we will have no economic security....and be Prisoners of War in our own country.

The Rev.

I do not believe we would be here Rev if we did not have "warriors".  Get real.  Until the next dispensation predicted..foretold...we live in hell....we do the best we can...how does it make you feel any better to always bash USA?  Why don't you ever look at other countries errors?  I think your personal agenda because you were forced to leave causes you to rant...like this..Of course this is just a simple little uninformed women about the big bad world talking..Just my little take ...kinda a woman Forest Gump..It will all come to an end ..we are in it...transformation is going on and it is not going to be fun for people who want to shame and blame...start praying

SMK: Great article! Many parallels can be drawn to what's occurring in today's economy and what occurred in the Great Depression. No doubt that the  crash of '29 had much to do with the depression, however it was only one factor and perhaps more of a leading indicator than a cause. A number of economists from the monetary  school, such as Milton Friedman, believe that the Federal Reserve, at the time, did the complete opposite of what it was set up to do and that its actions (or inactions) exacerbated the situation. Other economists believe that FDR's economic policies made things worse and that without his economic tinkering, the economy would have improved on its own at a faster pace. And other economists believe that without FDR's economic policies, things would have gotten much worse. The facts are that it took over a decade and a world war before the American economy got back on track. This begs the question: Do economic policies on the part of the Federal Government actually help the economy or just the reverse? 

"And you had Democrats and Republicans preventing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating many categories of derivatives."

" . . . the whole house of cards just goes higher and higher and because in the '80s and the '90s Democrats fingerprints were on this, too."

I have no doubt that a combination of macro economic policies (fiscal and monetary), if timed properly, can be used as effective tools to manage the economy, just as hydraulic engineering principles can be used to redirect or throttle and increase the flow of fluids. But unlike engineering principles, these economic tools are precluded from being used effectively due to the introduction of ideology and politics into the equation. And as long as ideology and politics continue to get in the way of sound economic principles, I don't see how government policies can effectively prevent recessions (and depressions) and maintain the economy on an even keel.

When I did the article on "regulatory capture", we still had a lot of Obama fans posting. We don't see many of them anymore.

I doubt that it is because of me and others here. I think that it is because it is too painful to admit to error.

Obama doesn't have what FDR had in terms of rallying people in a time such as this. He has been taught that we deserve our suffering. This is just another example of the "chickens coming home to roost".

That is a statement with a lot of truth, though, as well. The problem needs solving and talking about what Bush left behind is not an Rx.

FDR's regulatory innovations were good. I didn't like the Gingrich-Clinton dismantling of these regulations. Reuben of the Treasury, Clinton's man from Wall Streett, was behind a lot of this.

Do we call them "right-wing"? I don't think so.

We call them "elitists" whose allegiance is to their class and not America as a whole.

They are also the kind of idiots who think that self-regulatory systems with no real human supervision are possible.

That is exactly what Robert Graves meant by Mercury (trade, commerce), Pluto (riches, gold) and Apollo (scientific knowledge) sit on Zeus' absent throne. We have no one calling the boundaries on activities.

Because of that, we have whole sectors of human endeavor taking on the "what is good for GM is good for America" approach of an elite mandating and rationalizing the seizure of our social and economic system for their own benefit.

When I did the article on "regulatory capture", we still had a lot of Obama fans posting. Not one posted on that story. Now, we don't see many of them anymore.

I doubt that it is because of me and others here. I think that it is because it is too painful to admit to error.

Obama doesn't have what FDR had in terms of rallying people in a time such as this. He has been taught that we deserve our suffering. This is just another example of the "chickens coming home to roost".

That is a statement with a lot of truth, though, as well. The problem needs solving and talking about what Bush left behind is not an Rx.

FDR's regulatory innovations were good. I didn't like the Gingrich-Clinton dismantling of these regulations. Reuben of the Treasury, Clinton's man from Wall Streett, was behind a lot of this.

Do we call them "right-wing"? I don't think so.

We call them "elitists" whose allegiance is to their class and not America as a whole.

They are also the kind of idiots who think that self-regulatory systems with no real human supervision are possible.

That is exactly what Robert Graves meant by Mercury (trade, commerce), Pluto (riches, gold) and Apollo (scientific knowledge) sit on Zeus' absent throne. Those activities serve themselves and we have no one calling the boundaries on these activities to make sure we get benefits.

Because of that, we have whole sectors of human endeavor taking on the "what is good for GM is good for America" approach of an elite mandating and rationalizing the seizure of our social and economic system for their own benefit.

We have discussed economic cycles here many times agonizing over the current crisis with liberal and conservative points of view.  These cycles are best described by Hyman Minsky who disagreed with main stream economists of his day, but his theories are being proven now.

The following is from Wikipedia

Dr. Minsky proposed theories linking financial market fragility, in the normal life cycle of an economy, with speculative investment bubbles endogenous to financial markets. Minsky claimed that in prosperous times, when corporate cash flow rises beyond what is needed to pay off debt, a speculative euphoria develops, and soon thereafter debts exceed what borrowers can pay off from their incoming revenues, which in turn produces a financial crisis. As a result of such speculative borrowing bubbles, banks and lenders tighten credit availability, even to companies that can afford loans, and the economy subsequently contracts.

This slow movement of the financial system from stability to crisis is something for which Minsky is best known, and the phrase "Minsky moment" refers to this aspect of Minsky's academic work.

"He offered very good insights in the '60s and '70s when linkages between the financial markets and the economy were not as well understood as they are now," said Henry Kaufman, a Wall Street money manager and economist. "He showed us that financial markets could move frequently to excess. And he underscored the importance of the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort."[citation needed]

Minsky's model of the credit system, which he dubbed the "Financial Instability Hypothesis" (FIH), incorporated many ideas already circulated by John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, Knut Wicksell and Irving Fisher.[3] "A fundamental characteristic of our economy," Minsky wrote in 1974, "is that the financial system swings between robustness and fragility and these swings are an integral part of the process that generates business cycles."[citation needed]

Disagreeing with many mainstream economists of the day, he argued that these swings, and the booms and busts that can accompany them, are inevitable in a so-called free market economy – unless government steps in to control them, through regulation, central bank action and other tools. Such mechanisms did in fact came into existence in response to crises such as the Panic of 1907 and the Great Depression. Minsky opposed the deregulation that characterized the 1980s.