The Big Change: Lessons from the Great Depression

[PSPS]

The Big Change: Lessons from the Great Depression: Part XXI. Challenging Wall Street, Restoring Economic Confidence, and Dealing with the Biggest Financial Challenge since the Great Depression.

The country has spoken and with a loud and convincing voice. Change is demanded. This historic moment in our history is appreciated on so many levels but once again, the market reminded us very quickly that things are not well on the global economic system. President-elect Obama is going to have many challenges waiting for him once he takes office. It should come as no surprise that 6 out of 10 voters mentioned that the economy was the number one issue on their minds.

(snip)

The market once again on Wednesday took a brutal lashing as the ADP jobs report came in with weak numbers. The stresses on Wall Street are fully engaged with the fortunes of those on Main Street. As the capital injections go straight to the banks, not much has changed in terms of lending for the average American. Many banks are simply hoarding the money and if they are lending the money, they are still at high rates. One major failure of the bailout proposal is that it forgets to examine the issue of employment. You can give banks trillions of dollars but without a solid employment base no one is going to qualify for a loan.

Today, we are once again at an economic fork in the road. In all frankness, no one really knows where we are going from here. The so-called experts have been proven wrong over and over and a new system is needed to regulate the absurd greed and financial imprudence that plagued us this last decade.

More at: http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/the-big-change-lessons-from-the-great-depression-part-xxi-challenging-wall-street-restoring-economic-confidence-and-dealing-with-the-biggest-financial-challenge-since-the-great-depression/

[Old Codger]

1. The depression

It was a year later after the runs on the banks and all that the depression really hit, we have just started into that year,hopefully they will figure it out and do what is really necessary by then and forget loading the banks up instead of going to the base of the countries real wealth, the working man.

[asjr]

2. Those of us who went through the

Depression learned a few things. We learned early on to recycle, to eat leftovers, to save tin foil to use many times, to wear clothing until it almost fell apart. It made a great many of us pack rats. I STILL hang on to stuff I do not need because I just might need it in the future. If someone you knew needed something you had you gladly shared it. There were not that many cars around but we learned to carpool. We can do all that again but it makes me mad as hell to think we might have to. I still would like to see the Bush administration behind bars and eating mush instead of whatever they eat.

[Old Codger]

4. I didn't

Live during the depression I grew up in it's aftermath which was WWII, My folks did, lost dad in that one, but they never forgot and they always tried to instill in us the lessons they learned... I truly believe that we will dodge a depression, but it may come down to a small difference between depression and recession and I am not too sure it will matter much at all....We, as a country will survive now that we have real leadership...Of that I am sure..

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. The military have gone without adequate armour and veterans without

adequate medical care on their return, so that the likes of the plundering bank CEOs could retire with "golden parachutes" of millions, if not not in aggregate, billions of dollars.

And the Republicans thought that with their corrupt, suborned corporate-media they could continue to fool the people that they supported the troops, while Code Pink and the Democrats didn't - even that it was they who put country first! That was never a feature of a right-wing party anywhere, except in the sense that they've always considered the country to be co-terminous with themselves. Why, they couldn't even prevent female, service personnel being murdered and/or raped by their own colleagues! Or did they care? I don't know that much has come of the investigations yet, and it's an awful long time.

In the UK, the predominantly quasi Norman ruling class provided an officer class, for the most part, genuinely courageous in battle, but as for peace-time, their period of grace qua the welfare-state was as short-lived as that of the Labour Party; although men of honour in the Conservative Party had a marked distaste for the anomie and chaos Thatcher's brood were creating and resigned.

One of the strengths of those Tories was that they didn't need to be in it for the money, and it wasn't their life-blood, as it was for the best of the Labour Party, such as Wedegwood Benn. Thatcher sought to ridicule them as "wets". In a way, I suppose you could say that they were dilettantes, but they were all the better for that, in the circumstances. Tories though they were, what an asset they would have been to the country now, showing some common sense and decency. Though I doubt if they could have taken the lead in rebuilding the welfare state to its pristine quality, least of all in the kind of economic crisis threatening us.

[Bucky]

5. One reason the Depression lasted so long was a lack of new industrial technology

All the great business expansions in US history come on the heels of technological break-throughs: canal building, railroads, mechanical harvesters, assembly-line mass production, telecommunications, computers, and so on. It takes industrial development to end a downward economic cycle. Obama seems pretty smart about taking the steps toward encouraging that kind of growth.

I'm not too worried about the long term--I just want there to be some kind of economic relief in the next few years before the Republicans can start lying their way into the executive branch again.