Debt Rattle November 29 2016

 

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  • #31522

    NPC Skating night, Washington DC 1919 • How The Global Left Destroyed Itself -Or, All Sex Is Not Rape- (DLS) • Of Hoovervilles and Trump Towers (Thoma
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 29 2016]

    #31526
    Dr. Diablo
    Participant

    Herbert Hoover was Commerce Secretary under Warren Harding and continued under Calvin Coolidge. Before that, the US Food Administration. I’d call that “Public Office.” Not trying to be pedantic here, but you can’t just make up whatever facts you like to suit your prospective narrative. Maybe we’ll call it “Trumpening the narrative” since made-up facts seem to be a journalistic requirement concerning him. But let’s look deeper.

    “It has been suggested that Herbert Hoover was the best Secretary of Commerce in United States history” -wiki

    Golly, why? Because he served under a massively debt-inflationary speculative stock/economy bubble. Everyone likes it when free money (courtesy of the new Fed) is handed out to everyone, especially after the Great Depression of 1873-96, now long forgot. So anyway, everyone loves you in a never-ending boom.

    Oh wait–actually Harding/Hoover presided over the worst stock market crash in US history, the Panic of 1921.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%9321
    https://fee.org/articles/the-depression-youve-never-heard-of-1920-1921/
    GDP dropped 7% and prices fell 18% in 18 months while stocks were cut by nearly half. Government spending was savaged, rates soared. As Commerce Secretary, Hoover begged to intervene and stop the ruin of the young nation, but was voted down: speculators were liquidated, banks failed, businesses were ruined, unemployment soared. …And 18 months later, the nation emerged restored and ran into the Roaring 20’s. By contrast, saving our system has run into a 16-year Depression since 2001, most of my working life as an employee, meaning wages, interest, and opportunity I can never get back, houses never bought, families never formed, careers never progressed, ideas never created. Markets can tolerate a 16 year delay, but human lives cannot. In the last 8 years, GDP has never reached 3% despite $10 Trillion in spending and shameless number-rigging hiding an unemployment probably exceeding 25%. If we’d done a 1921, it would have been over already.

    So then in 1930, Hoover had a chance to have it his way. He intervened in the new Crash of ‘29, following the Keynesian theory of offsetting the Depression with a 40% increase in Gov’t spending, continuing to run massive deficits with the RFC (a New Deal plan), and used $1B to support the banks and commerce. It worsened everything. FDR ran him out of office on the solid anti-war, balanced-budget platform he’s known for today. What? Roosevelt lied to get into office? How can this be? And he is known for doubling down on all of Hoover’s failed policies and kept the Depression going for almost 20 years, instead of trying Harding’s ’21 Depression plan? You mean the same way Obama doubled down on all of George Bush’s policies and failures? History’s funny that way.

    Anyway, having only the common-knowledge version of it I understand. Simply making up facts that 10 seconds on Wikipedia can fix, I can’t. Fake News: it’s true, it really IS everywhere.

    #31527
    E. Swanson
    Participant

    Chris Hedges: <b>Waiting for the Barbarians </b>

    We await the crisis. It could be economic. It could be a terrorist attack within the United States. It could be widespread devastation caused by global warming. It could be nationwide unrest as the death spiral of the American empire intensifies. It could be another defeat in our endless and futile wars. The crisis is coming. And when it arrives it will be seized upon by the corporate state, nominally led by a clueless real estate developer, to impose martial law and formalize the end of American democracy.

    The last constraints will be removed by a crisis. The crisis will be used to create a climate of fear. The pretense of democracy will end.

    https://www.truthdig.com/report/item/waiting_for_the_barbarians_201611271

    #31530
    Nassim
    Participant

    Anthropologists have yet to find a community anywhere and at any time in history that did not have a “religion”. Since in the West we are now mostly living in post-Christian societies, I wonder what the new religion might be:

    The CO2 God causes quakes, tsunamis and volcanoes 🙂

    #31531
    John Day
    Participant

    @Nassim,
    The new religion is already here, Bokononism.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism
    The primary tenant is, “Truth is a lie”.
    Care to dispute?
    🙂

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