Despite Congressman Barney Frank’s blubbering insistence that our nation’s current financial mess is a “new phenomena,” today’s “housing/credit/confidence crisis” is anything but. Our ancestors had already seen all the broken dreams and ignorant greed surfing high on a wave of paper money and hollow credit – more than once before. The America of 1819 and the financial panic its citizens experienced was only the first of what is America’s true national pastime: speculative mania. FULL ARTICLE
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7 comments ↓
Wow, a little history….the more things change, right?
It’s almost like the government is well-versed in this history, and the history of the 1920-21 crash, and are avoiding doing anything similiar, which would get us out of the economic troubles fast.
People don’t look to the government for help when the economy is doing well
An interesting piece, but it’s a libertarian not a populist piece. Libertarians like this writer favor the gold standard and free markets. Populists overwhelmingly opposed the gold standard and called for serious structuring of the markets (public ownership of railroads, for instance). The gold standard favors creditors, not borrowers, that is, the bankers and vested interests. The gold standard tends to be deflationary, making credit hard to get, and harming productive enterprises which need to borrow money. But once investors become more interested (for any reason) in borrowing money themselves than lending it to others, the gold standard is abandoned with little fuss. Populists by contrast insisted on publicly controlled money, with strong limitations on interest rates, and they promoted land and other assets for collateral, not gold. Giving most of the benefit of credit to borrowers rather than lenders, they argued, would naturally distribute wealth to the many instead of concentrating it in the hands of the few, the creditors. And the government, understood to be democratic and decentralized, would still have to be strong enough nationally to enforce a non-usurious system of public credit. It would also have to be strong enough to prevent domination of the markets by large corporations or other entities in a position to advance monopoly pricing and destroy the “free” market, a point libertarians consistently seem to miss.
This is a good study in the reactions of people under stress. Reminds me of the bottled water commercial where the guy who presented a plan to market water was soundly laughed off the board.
Today’s market is anything but free. And there is a shyster behind ever bush ( although true, no pun intended ).
I think the bailouts were History’s greatest Ponzi scheme. But I do think intervention of the government could have been the best thing that happened. Unfortunately the first bailout went from a 3 page manifesto to hundreds of pages and buried deep in those pages and words were license to steal and rob the taxpayer. And few are surprised because we understand what our Government has become - our most feared pillager.
Cliff, you’re absolutely right when you say our markets are anything but free. Government is involved at every level of our economy, telling us what we can and cannot buy, who we can trade with and regulating the hell out of the economy to the point that the only ones who can afford it are the big, big corporations. The government is the tool of the corps and does everything they can to keep small business down….and encouraging corporate takeovers.
Yes Allen that’s why I speak of the Shadow Government that actually sets policy and politics for the United States. Some are American, some even elected, but the rest are not American.
All are managed by the World Financial Cabal, whom some might refer to as the “New World Order”.
Those who hold the money have every thing else.
Those who hold the money? No doubt about it! The federal reserve is the chief culprit, and their partners, the banks.
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